ALVMNVS  BOOK  FVND 


500 


Vol.  XXV,  3  Whole  Ho.  147 

THE 

PHILOSOPHICAL 
REVIEW 

May,  1916 


PAPERS  IN  HONOR  OF  JOSIAH  ROYCE 
^^         ON  HIS  SIXTIETH  BIRTHDAY 


•..■  ;•■;  : 


pU-bu'sh  ED :  teiriJ  cSnVm  ur. 


LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO, 

LANCASTER,  PA. 

FOURTH  AVENUE  AND  30th  STREET,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON  AGENCY,  39  PATERNOSTER  ROW,  E.  C. 
SINGLE  NUMBERS,  60c.  (3s.net.)  PER  ANNUM,  S3.00  (Us.) 

PRICE  OF  THIS  SPECIAL  NUMBER  S1.50 


The  Philosophical  Review 

Contents  for  May,   191 6 

PAGE 

Frontispiece 

Prefatory  Note 229 

Joseph  Royce:  The  Significance  of  his  Work  in  Philosophy  .  G    H.  HowisON  231 

Voluntarism  in  the  Roycean  Philosophy John  Dewey  245 

Novum  Itinerarium  Mentis  in  Deum  .        ...  Charles  M.  Bakewell  255 

The  Teleology  of  Inorganic  Nature Lawrence  J.  Hender.son  265 

The  Foundation  in  Royce' s  Philosophy  for  Christian  Theism. 

Mary  Whiton  Calkins  282 
The  Interpretation  of  Religion  in  Royce  and  Durkheim  .    .  George  P.  Adams  297 

The  Problem  of  Christianity  .    .  Wm.  Adams  Brown  305 

Royce's  Interpretation  of  Christianity B.  W.  BACON  315 

Error  and  Unreality W.  H.  Sheldon  335 

Realistic  Aspects  of  Royce's  Logic  ....  ...      E.  G.  Spaulding  365 

Neo-Realism  and  the  Philosophy  of  Royce  .......  Morris  R.  Cohen  378 

Negation  and  Direction Alfred  H.  Lloyd  383 

Types  of  Order  and  the  System  S CI.  Lewis  407 

Interpretation  as  a  Self-Representative  Process J.  Loewenberg  420 

On  the  Application  of  Grammatical  Categories  to  the  Analysis  of  Delusions. 

E.  E.  Southard  424 

Love   and  Loyalty E.  A.  Singer  456 

Josiah  Royce  as  a  Teacher Richard  C.  Cabot  466 

Royce's  Idealism  as  a  Philosophy  of  Education H.  H.  Horne  473 

The  Holt-Freudian  Ethics  and  the  Ethics  of  Royce. 

William  Ernest  Hocking  479 
Words  of  Professor  Royce  at  the  Walton  Hotel  at  Philadelphia,  December  29, 

»9i5 507 

A  Bibliography  of  the  Writings^f  Josiah  Roycq^  : .  J.    .    .    .  Benjamin  Rand  515 

Articles  intended  for  publicajipn,  bQQks  for  review-,,  exchanges,  and  all  corre- 
spondence in  reference  t^crct&/5h,e'ifloi.fie'4dar«5sed''4o. Professor  J.  E.  Creighton, 
The  Philosophical  Review,  Cornell  University,  Ithaca,  N.  Y. 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,   AND   CO. 

41  N.  Queen  St.,  Lancaster,  Pa.,  443  Fourth  Ave.,  New  York  City. 

Copyrighted  in  the  name  of  the  Treasurer  of  Cornell  Univcraity. 
Entered  in  the  post-office  at  Lancaster,  Ta.,   as  second-class  matter 


Cornell  Studies  in  Philosophy 

Under  the  above  title  a  series  of  monograph  studies  will  be  pub- 
lished from  time  to  time  as  representative  of  the  work  done  in  the 
philosophical  departments  of  Cornell  University.  These  mono- 
graphs will  be  issued  under  the  general  editorial  supervision  of  the 
professors  of  these  departments,  and  will  be  composed  of  certain 
theses  which  have  been  accepted  for  the  Doctor's  degree  at 
Cornell  University,  and  in  some  cases  of  more  prolonged  studies 
which  have  been  carried  on  by  graduates  of  the  Sage  School  of 
Philosophy. 


The  following  numbers  have  already  been  issued  ; — 

No.  1.  Some  Problems  of  Lotze's  Theory  of  Knowledge.  By 
Edwin  Proctor  Robins. — pp.  vii,  io8.  75  cents  net. 

No.  2.  Brahman :  A  Study  of  Indian  Philosophy.  By  Hervey 
Dewitt  Griswold,  A.B.,  Ph.D. — pp.  vili,  89.  75 
cents  net. 

No.  3.  The  Philosophy  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche.  By  Grace 
Neal  Dolson,  A.B.,  Ph.D.— pp.  1 10.     [Out  of  print.] 

No.  4.  The  Ethical  Aspect  of  I^tze's  Metaphysics.  By  Vida 
F.  Moore,  M.S.,  Ph.D.— pp.  iv,  loi.  Price  75 
cents  net. 

No.  5.  Maine  de  Biran's  Philosophy  of  Will.  By  Nathan 
E.  Truman,  A.B.,  Ph.D. — pp.  v,  93.     75  cents  net. 

No.  6.  The  Philosophy  of  F.  H.  Jacobi.  By  Alexander  W. 
Crawford,  A.M.,  Ph.D. — pp.  iii,  90.     75  cents  net. 

No.  7.  The  Fundamental  Principle  of  Fichte's  Philosophy. 
By  Ellen  Bliss  Talbot,  A.B.,  Ph.D.— pp.  iv,  140. 
$1.00  net. 

No.  8.  Thought  and  Reality  in  Hegel's  System.  By  Gusta- 
vus  Watts  Cunningham,  A.M.,  Ph.D. — pp.  vi,  151. 
$1.25  net. 

No.  9.  Schopenhauer's  Criticism  of  Kant's  Theory  of  Ex- 
perience. By  Radoslav  A.  Tsanoff,  A.B.,  Ph.D. 
— pp.  xiii,  77.     Price  75  cents  net. 

No.  10.  The  Principle  of  Individuality  in  the  Philosophy  of 
Thomas  Hill  Green.  By  Harvey  Gates  Town- 
send,  A.B..  Ph.D. — pp.  vi,  91.     75  cents  net. 


LONGMANS,  GREEN,  &  CO. 

Fourth  Avenue  and  30th  Street  NEW  YORK 


CORNELL  UNIVERSITY 

Sage  School  of  Philosophy 


J.  G.  Schurman,  A.M.,  D.Sc.,  LL.D.,  President.  J.  E.  Creighton,  A.B., 
Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Logic  and  Metaphysics.  E.  B.  Titchener,  D.Sc,  Ph.D., 
LL.D.,  Litt.D.,  Professor  of  Psychology  in  the  Graduate  School.  Frank  Thilly, 
A.B..  Ph.D.,  LL.D..  Professor  of  Philosophy.  W.  A.  Hammond,  A.M..  Ph.D., 
Professor  of  Ancient  and  Mediaeval  Philosophy.  Ernest  Albee,  A.B..  Ph.D., 
Professor  of  Philosophy.  Harry  P.  Weld,  A.B.,  Ph.D.,  Assistant  Professor  of 
Psychology.  W.  K.  Wright,  A.B.,  Ph.D.,  Instructor  of  Philosophy.  A.J.Thomas, 
A.B.,  Assistant  in  Philosophy.  W.  S.  Foster,  A.B.,  Ph.D.,  Instructor  in  Psyhcol- 
ogy.  Edwin  G.  Boring,  A.M.,  Instructor  in  Psychology.  H.  G.  Bishop,  M.S  , 
Assistant  in  Psychology. 

COURSES  OF  LECTURES. 
I.  LOGIC. — (i)  Elements  of  Logic;  (2)  Logic  and  the  Methods  of  the  Sci- 
ences; (3)  Seminary  in  the  Modern  Developments  of  Logical  Theory. 

II.  PSYCHOLOGY.— (i)  Outlines  of  Psychology;  (2)  Advanced  Psychology 
(including  Experimental  and  Physiological  Psychology) ;  (3)  Psychological  Seminary 
and  Laboratory. 

III.  ETHICS.— (i)  Elements  of  Ethics;  (2)  Christian  Ethics;  (3)  Funda- 
mental Problems  of  Ethics;  (4)  History  of  Ethics;  (5)  Practical  or  Applied  Ethics; 
(6)  Ethical  Seminary 

IV.  HISTORY  AND  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION.— (i)  History  of  Re- 
ligion; (2)  Philosophy  of  ReUgion. 

V.  METAPHYSICS  AND  EPISTEMOLOGY.— (i)  Systematic  Theory 
of  Knowledge;  (2)  Rationalism  and  Empiricism;  (3)  Intuitionism  and  Criticism; 
(4)  Metaphysical  Seminary. 

VI.  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY.— (i)  Greek  Philosophy  (including  the 
Alexandrian  and  Roman);  (2)  The  Writings  and  Philosophy  of  Plato  and  Aristotle; 
(3)  Mediteval  Philosophy;  (4)  Modern  Philosophy;  (5)  Contemporary  Pliilosophy 
in  Germany,  France,  and  Great  Britain;  (6)  Current  Philosophical  Literature. 

VII.  RELATED  COURSES  IN  OTHER  DEPARTMENTS.— (i)  Chem- 
istry and  Chemical  Philosophy;  (2)  Systematic  Physics  and  Ultimate  Physical 
Theories;  (3)  Physiology  and  Biology  (including  Morphology  of  the  Brain);  (4)  The 
Higher  Literature  of  Greece  and  Germany;  (5)  Political  Science  (including  Social 
Institutions),  Political  Economy,  Roman  Law,  and  International  Law;  (6)  The 
Private,  Political,  and  Religious  Life  and  Institutions  of  the  Hindus,  Greeks,  and 
Romans;  (7)  The  Science  and  Art  of  Education. 


Statement  of  the  Ownership,  Management,  Etc. 

As  of  December,  1915,  of  The  Philosophical  Review,  published 
bi-monthly  at 

Lancaster,  Pa. 

Required  by  the  Act  of  August  24,  1914. 

Name  of  Post-office  address 

Editor — J.  E.  Creighton  Ithaca,  N.  Y. 

Managing  Editor — J.  E.  Creighton  Ithaca,  N.  Y. 

Business  Manager — J.  E.  Creighton  Ithaca,  N.  Y. 

Publisher — Longmans,  Green,  &  Co.  Lancaster,  Pa.,  and  Fourth 

Ave.    and  30th    St.,   New 
York  City. 
Owner — Cornell  University  Ithaca,  N.  Y. 

J.  E.  Creighton,  Editor. 

Sworn  to  and  subscribed  before  me. 

(Seal)  Elizabeth  L.  Driscoll,  Notary  Public. 


^^^^^^^^H^^^^/^^7^^^^^^^1 

^^^^^^^^^^^^H 

^^>^^^^^^^^^^^^^H 

■  :-" 

^^^^^^^H 

f^^r 

^^Hk..^-.  - '      "^ 

'w''      1 

^HL^. 

||H|fl 

^^^^^^HK^^^k^ 

^^H 

^^^^^^^^^^^Ky^  "^-y^  •-■^fl^^l 

^^^H 

B 

p^s-|^^^y^^B 

^H 

JOSIAIl    ROVCE 

1914 

(Act.  5«) 


Number  j.  Whole 

Volume  XXV.  May,  igi6.  Number  147. 


\>^ 


THE 


PHILOSOPHICAL   REVIEW. 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 

TN  November,  191 5,  Professor  Josiah  Royce  completed  his 
-■-  sixtieth  year.  A  number  of  men  who  have  studied  and 
worked  with  him  as  colleagues  and  students  during  some  part 
of  the  thirty-seven  years  of  his  professional  activity  had  for 
some  time  planned  to  make  on  this  occasion  some  public  recog- 
nition of  Professor  Royce's  distinguished  services  to  philosophy, 
both  as  a  teacher  and  as  a  writer.  The  American  Philosophical 
Association,  of  which  Professor  Royce  was  president  in  1903,  ex- 
pressed through  its  officers  a  request  that  its  members  should  be 
permitted  to  share  in  this  celebration.  Accordingly,  at  the  annual 
meeting  of  the  association  held  at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania 
on  December  28-30,  191 5,  two  of  the  sessions  were  devoted  to 
papers  dealing  more  or  less  directly  with  various  phases  and 
doctrines  of  Professor  Royce's  philosophy.  Professor  Royce 
was  the  guest  of  honor  at  a  banquet  at  the  Hotel  Walton  on 
December  29,  at  which  were  read  letters  of  congratulation  and 
appreciation  from  distinguished  philosophical  scholars  of  this 
country  and  of  Europe.  At  this  banquet  Professor  Royce  gave 
in  response  to  the  various  toasts  and  messages  of  congratulation 
the  interesting  autobiographical  account  of  his  experiences  and 
personal  convictions  which  is  published  in  this  number  of  the 
Review. 

In  addition  to  the  papers  read  at  the  meeting  of  the  American 
Philosophical  Association,  this  number  of  the  Review  contains 
papers  by  a  number  of  other  writers  who  desired  to  have  a  share 
in  the  celebration  in  honor  of  Professor  Royce.     The  presenta- 

229 

334565 


230  ''  PREFATORY  NOTE. 

tion  to  the  readers  of  the  Review  of  the  large  number  of  valuable 
papers  inspired  by  this  occasion  has  been  made  possible  by  the 
support  extended  by  a  few  of  Professor  Royce's  friends. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  these  papers,  although  con- 
tributed by  men  who  in  some  form  acknowledge  a  debt  of  grati- 
tude to  Royce,  and  many  of  whom  have  been  his  pupils,  are  largely 
critical  as  well  as  appreciative.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  although 
we  may  adopt  labels  like  '  Idealism,'  '  Pragmatism,'  and  '  Realism,' 
for  rough  classificatory  purposes,  yet  philosophy  does  not  tend  to 
develop  in  this  country  in  the  form  of  closed  schools.  The  in- 
fluence of  a  teacher  like  Professor  Royce,  great  as  it  has  been 
and  is,  does  not  lead  to  the  literal  adoption  of  his  doctrines,  but 
manifests  itself  in  stimulating  and  promoting  the  spirit  of  inquiry 
and  of  universality  through  which  his  own  philosophy  has  been 
developed.  This,  indeed,  has  everywhere  been  characteristic  of 
the  influence  of  great  philosophical  teachers.  The  spirit  of  true 
loyalty  to  the  master  has  always  been,  amicus  Plato,  sed  magis 
arnica  Veritas. 

J.  E.  C. 


JOSIAH  ROYCE:  THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF    HIS  WORK 
IN  PHILOSOPHY. 

TT  is  with  sincere  satisfaction,  Mr.  President  and  Members  of 
-'-  the  Association,  that  I  accept  the  invitation,  conveyed 

through  the  chairman  of  your  Committee  of  Arrangements,  to 
take  part  in  the  proceedings  at  this  meeting  in  honor  of  Professor 
Josiah  Royce.  I  am  glad  of  this  opportunity  on  my  own  personal 
account  as  well  as  on  that  of  the  University  of  California,  his 
original  alma  mater,  which  is  justly  proud  of  him  and  of  the 
notable  record  he  has  made.  In  the  admiration  felt  by  his 
native  university,  I  of  course  strongly  share.  Parted  by  the 
breadth  of  the  continent  though  we  have  been  for  these  long 
years  since  1884,  we  have  nevertheless  had  many  students  in 
common.  In  fact,  several  of  your  prominent  members,  holding 
the  chief  positions  in  their  subject  at  leading  institutions  of  the 
country — at  Yale,  at  Johns  Hopkins,  here  at  California,  at  Stan- 
ford, at  Missouri,  and,  till  recently,  at  Texas — had  their  initial 
training  here  at  Cahfornia  and  here  received  the  stimulus  that 
fixed  them  in  a  devotion  to  philosophy.  In  the  pursuit  of  this 
they  became,  by  my  advice,  as  members  of  the  Harvard  graduate 
school,  the  diligent  hearers  of  Professor  Royce  and  his  colleagues. 
Of  his  own  original  students,  on  the  other  hand,  prominent  ones, 
whose  abilit}^  and  whose  profit  from  him  their  present  positions 
before  the  country— at  Harvard,  at  Columbia,  at  Michigan — 
now  prove,  in  a  degree  that  must  give  him  well-founded  grati- 
fication, came  into  the  department  of  philosophy  at  California 
as  my  younger  colleagues;  there,  by  taking  a  constant  part  in 
the  graduate  seminar  of  advanced  logic  and  metaphysics  con- 
tinuously conducted  here,  they  became  my  students  as  well  as 
my  colleagues,  and  returned  later^to  the  east  with  an  acknowl- 
edged attachment  to  this  University  which  has  been  of  profound 
satisfaction  to  its  authorities  and  of  great  benefit  to  myself. 

This  important  interchange  in  a  common  calling  has  given  me 
an  especial  interest  in  Professor  Royce's  labors,  and  has  caused 

231 


232  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

me  to  follow  his  work  and  his  very  numerous  publications  with 
an  attention  that  I  hope  has  corresponded  to  the  worth  of  his 
performance. 

On  this  extraordinary  occasion  of  his  honoring  recognition  by 
his  colleagues  from  all  parts  of  the  country,  I  therefore  join 
cordially  in  congratulating  him  on  his  notable  career.  It  has 
indeed  been  of  very  marked  achievement.  Beginning  in  a  small 
country  village  among  the  foothills  of  the  Sierra,  on  the  remote 
shores  of  our  western  frontier,  amid  surroundings  none  too  friendly 
of  the  rugged  pioneer  life  in  a  mining  region,  it  has  grown  to 
international  proportions;  his  words  have  been  heard  and  his 
thoughts  upon  many  of  the  most  difficult  human  questions  have 
been  considered  beyond  both  the  great  oceans.  Such  an  ex- 
tended hearing  has  doubtless  been  aided  by  the  great  spread  of 
the  English  language,  following  on  the  extension  of  British  empire 
and  American  colonization;  but  his  native  equipment  and  his 
active  industry  have  enabled  him  to  take  advantage  of  this,  so 
that  still  in  middle  life,  having  barely  passed  his  sixtieth  year,  he 
has  gained  for  the  thinking  of  another  American  a  serious  general 
attention.  It  is  a  fact  of  which,  as  his  countrymen,  we  may  all 
well  be  glad ;  a  case  of  the  unexpected  that  is  solid  experimental 
reality;  a  thing  for  which  we  can  sincerely  give  him  recognition 
without  flattery,  and  without  any  suspicion  of  compromising 
our  self-respect. 

Yet  as  members  of  a  profession  so  serious  in  import  as  ours,  in 
which  he  has  proved  himself  such  a  valiant  example,  we  should 
fall  short,  I  am  sure,  of  his  own  wishes  if  we  spent  this  occasion 
in  mere  personal  laudation.  Rather,  we  should  gather  from  his 
career  and  his  work  the  real  lessons  which  they  convey  for  our 
proper  business — the  stimulation  and  leadership  of  thought  as 
the  guide  of  life.  This  is  not  a  time,  certainly,  for  rigid  criticism 
or  disputative  objections;  but  we  may  well  take  the  trouble, 
indeed  we  must  not  fail  to  take  it,  to  ascertain  what  important 
questions  he  has  put  before  us  for  settlement;  above  all,  what 
positive  contributions  he  has  left  us,  upon  which  we  must  proceed 
in  the  further  work  which  as  thinkers  we  must  do  if  we  would  go 
forward  in  the  genuine  spirit  of  his  example. 


No.  3.]  JOSIAH  ROYCE.  233 

What,  then,  has  been  the  Indisputably  permanent  thing  in  his 
work?  What  doctrine,  or  doctrines,  has  he  put  forward,  from 
which  we  cannot  wisely  depart,  but  on  the  contrary  must  adhere 
to,  must  develop  and  improve,  if  we  are  to  succeed  in  our  real 
business?  And  what,  on  the  other  hand,  must  we  be  on  our 
guard  against,  if  against  anything,  lest  we  run  into  views  injurious 
to  our  human  calling,  and  mislead  others  into  error? 

For  an  illumining  answer  to  these  questions,  I  must  ask  you 
to  listen  to  certain  biographical  items,  not  generally  known,  or, 
if  known,  not  taken  enough  public  account  of.  Without  in  the 
least  detracting  from  his  own  powers  and  credit,  it  is  no  doubt 
a  fact,  of  which  Professor  Royce  himself  has  made  the  most  loyal 
and  public  acknowledgment,  particularly  in  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
oration  at  Harvard,  though  repeatedly  and  in  many  other  places, 
that  he  owes  a  considerable  part  of  his  singular  success  to  his 
early  recognition  and  hearty  appreciation  by  his  friend  William 
James.  James,  in  his  published  answer  to  the  question,  What 
is  the  good  of  going  to  college?  has  said  with  penetration  that  it 
is  the  power  this  gives  you  to  know  a  good  specimen  of  a  man 
on  sight;  and  this,  his  prompt  discovery  of  our  now  noted  col- 
league has  pointedly  illustrated.  It  was  from  James,  my  own 
greatly  valued  friend  as  well  as  his,  that  I  first  heard  of  Royce; 
not  directly,  for  he  did  not  himself  speak  to  me  on  the  matter, 
but  by  a  message  sent  through  one  of  my  students  at  the  Massa- 
chusetts Institute  of  Technology,  inquiring  whether  I  had  met 
"Mr.  Royce  of  California,"  and,  in  case  I  had  not,  advising  me 
not  to  miss  seeing  him.  This  must  have  been  quite  soon  after 
Royce's  graduation  at  California,  perhaps  while  he  was  on  his 
way  to  his  studies  at  Johns  Hopkins — somewhere  about  the  fall 
of  1876.  Nothing  came  of  this,  however:  I  was  too  busy  to 
hunt  the  young  man  up  (he  was  then  in  his  twentieth  or  twenty- 
first  year),  and  I  heard  nothing  more  of  him  until  after  he  had 
taken  his  doctorate  at  Johns  Hopkins,  where  he  had  heard  James 
(and  perhaps  Stanley  Hall)  in  psychology,  Peirce  in  logic,  and 
George  Morris,  the  able  and  accomplished  translator  of  Ueberweg, 
on  the  history  of  philosophy  and  on  Hegel,  had  gone  to  Germany 
and  heard  I  know  not  whom,  and  had  returned  to  California 


234  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

to  take  an  instructorship  at  his  alma  mater,  in  the  depart- 
ment of  English,  where  the  poet  Sill  became  his  chief.  Here 
I  later  heard  he  was  not  happy  with  some  of  his  learned 
colleagues.  With  a  genuine  insight  into  the  needed  foundations 
for  the  writing  of  English,  or  indeed  of  any  language,  he  discerned 
it  was  necessary  to  lay  an  underpinning  of  logic.  For  this  pur- 
pose, he  wrote  and  printed  in  San  Francisco,  in  1881,  and  used 
with  his  classes,  his  remarkable  Primer  of  Logical  Analysis,  a 
work  of  great  originality  and  suggestiveness,  in  fact  one  of  his 
best  productions.  But  many  of  his  colleagues  and  some  of  the 
Regents  thought  this  a  transgression  of  the  departmental  boun- 
daries and  voted  that  the  instructor  must  stickot  the  department 
lines,  must  teach  English  composition  and  not  logic;  and  so  on, 
and  so  on.  This  led  Royce  to  be  glad  to  give  up  the  California 
position,  and  to  come,  I  think  in  1882,  to  Harvard  as  a  substitute 
for  James,  who  was  to  be  away  in  Europe  on  his  sabbatical. 
With  a  true  thinker's  confidence,  however,  he  offered  in  addition  to 
his  regulation  duties  a  public  course  of  lectures  on  the  philosophy 
of  religion.  It  proved  a  great  "take,"  and  made  his  Harvard 
fortune;  he  afterwards  printed  the  substance  of  the  lectures  in 
his  first  published  work.  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy.  In 
his  first  years  at  Harvard  I  still  got  no  opportunity  to  meet 
him,  being  absent  in  Europe  and,  later,  at  Michigan,  and  far  too 
busy  with  my  own  work.  But  I  heard  of  him  one  day  in  a  way 
that  challenged  attention.  The  late  Edward  Everett  Hale  asked 
me  if  I  had  seen  or  heard  "this  striking  young  man  from  Cali- 
fornia"; when  I  said  no.  Dr.  Hale  went  on:  "Well,  he  seems 
noticeable,  surely.  What  do  you  think  I  heard  him  doing  in  a 
lecture  the  other  afternoon?  Why,  nothing  less  than  showing 
that  our  human  ignorance  is  the  positive  proof  that  there  is  a 
God — a  supreme  Omniscient  Being!"  This  certainly  caused 
me,  as  the  slang  saying  is,  to  "sit  up  and  listen,"  but  I  still  had 
no  opportunity  to  meet  the  young  lecturer  until  I  saw  him,  a 
singular  figure,  at  the  annual  dinner  of  the  Examiner  Club,  in 
May,  1884.  Even  then  we  got  no  chance  to  speak  together,  but 
I  was  so  struck  by  his  unusual  appearance,  that  of  a  middle-aged 
British  head  and  countenance  set  on  a  smallish  youthful  body, 


No.  3.]  JOSIAH  ROYCE.  235 

that  I  could  not  avoid  asking  a  neighbor  at  the  table  who  he 
was,  and  was  told  it  was  Royce.  It  was  not  until  the  autumn 
of  1884,  when  I  came  to  California  to  take  up  the  duties  of  the 
new  Mills  professorship  of  philosophy,  that  at  length  I  met  our 
guest,  who  was  spending  his  vacation  there  in  work  upon  his 
history  of  California.  I  saw  him  frequently  then,  and  found  him 
the  good  character  and  the  vivid  thinker  that  we  have  all  since 
known  him  to  be.  Yet  in  all  our  talks,  I  never  gathered  what, 
if  anything  definite,  his  Weltanschauung  might  be,  as  our  German 
brethren  call  it.  I  kept  remembering  what  George  Morris  had 
said  to  me  about  him,  that  "he  could  never  himself  learn  what 
the  young  man  thought  on  any  of  the  questions  or  systems  upon 
which  he  (Morris)  lectured."  It  was  not  until  1885,  in  the  fall 
or  winter,  that  Royce  sent  me  a  copy  of  The  Religious  Aspect  of 
Philosophy,  from  which  I  learned  his  substantial  membership  at 
that  time  in  the  school  of  Hegel  and  was  in  consequence  greatly 
pleased,  as  I  was  then  myself  still  a  good  Hegelian,  as  yet  un- 
suspecting the  profound  inconsistency,  which  I  came  ere  long  to 
discover,  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Hegelian  "center,"  that  the  real 
universe  is  an  all-inclusive  Spirit,  a  God  who  is  a  "Person  of 
persons,"  in  whom  all  particular  and  individual  selves  "live  and 
move  and  have  their  being" :  a  stern  and  uncompromising  system 
of  universal  Determinism. 

In  1895,  a  few  years  after  our  California  foundation  of  the 
Philosophical  Union,  we  began  a  series  of  Annual  Addresses  by 
the  authors  of  the  books  used  by  the  society  as  bases  for  its 
studies  in  the  successive  years.  At  our  first  public  meeting  for 
this  purpose.  Professor  Royce,  then  ten  years  beyond  the  publi- 
cation of  his  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  and  well  established 
in  the  public  notice,  was  naturally  the  chief  speaker.  The  as- 
semblage was  so  large  as  not  only  to  fill  the  auditorium  to  its 
capacity,  but  to  make  it  impossible  for  hundreds  to  find  entrance; 
the  people  from  San  Francisco,  Oakland,  Alameda,  and  Berkeley, 
were  greatly  curious  to  see  and  hear  the  first  graduate  of  their 
State  University  who  had  attained  to  a  full  professorship  at 
Harvard.  Professor  Royce  read  with  his  well  known  animation 
and  skill  a  paper,  two  hours  in  length,  to  this  audience  who  never 


236  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

took  its  attention  off  him,  though  the  great  majority  of  them 
must  have  been  quite  innocent  of  understanding  what  he  said. 
The  proceedings,  including  his  address  and  notable  papers  on  it, 
by  his  honored  teacher  Joseph  LeConte  and  Dr.  Sidney  Mezes, 
their  common  student  earlier,  who  had  long  been  also  mine,^ 
were  two  years  afterwards  published  in  the  volume  en  tided  The 
Conception  of  God;  the  three  papers,  when  thus  printed  in  1897, 
were  accompanied  by  a  series  of  my  own  comments,  which  I 
felt  I  must  not  refrain  from  making.  I  am  burdening  you  with 
these  long  digressive  details,  because  I  wish  to  bring  unmis- 
takably to  your  attention  this  important  but  little  read  volume, 
chiefly  by  Professor  Royce,  containing  besides  his  address  his 
much  fuller  discussion  of  his  theory  of  Idealistic  Monism  as  the 
true  account,  as  he  then  thought,  of  the  nature  of  the  absolutely 
real  world;  containing  also  his  replies  to  his  three  critics.  It  is 
undoubtedly  one  of  his  most  significant  writings,  indispensable 
for  a  clear  understanding  of  the  metaphysical  theory  which  he 
then  held,  and  continued  to  hold  for  years  afterwards,  and  con- 
tains his  clearest  as  well  as  most  condensed  statement  of  the  noted 
argument  by  which  he  believed  he  was  demonstrating  the  monistic 
conception  of  the  nature  and  actual  existence  of  God,  and  by 
which  he  certainly  and  conclusively  refuted  agnosticism.  For 
this  last  reason,  this  book,  like  his  other  and  still  less  known  work 
that  I  have  mentioned,  the  Primer  of  Logical  Analysis,  constitutes 
part  of  his  enduring  contributions  to  our  field.  It  may  well  be 
made  a  landmark,  and  a  base  for  our  further  advance  in  settled 
decisions  in  our  subject. 

The  allied  theory,  that  the  defense  of  our  capacity  for  absolute 
certainty  must  rest  upon  an  idealistic  metaphysics,  is,  as  I 
think,  Professor  Royce's  other  contribution  to  philosophy  to 
which  we  must  adhere;  I  speak  of  it  as  his  contribution,  because, 
though  the  doctrine  is  not  his  save  by  hearty  acceptance,  I  am 
thinking  now  of  the  subtle  and  unexpected  argumentation  by 
which  he  has  supported  this  oldest  and  best  expression  of  our 
historic  human  insight,  dating  from  Socrates  and  Plato  in  Europe, 

1  At  that  time  in  charge  of  the  philosophical  department  at  the  University  of 
Texas,  later  its  president,  and  now  president  of  the  College  of  the  City  of  New  York. 


No.  3.]  JOSIAH  ROYCE.  237 

but  having  its  earlier  beginnings  in  the  philosophies  of  the  Orient. 
It  is  this  native  gift  for  original  argumentative  research  that  makes 
the  genius  of  our  colleague.  His  two  volumes  of  Gifford  Lectures, 
The  World  and  the  Individual,  are  full  of  this  original  reasoning; 
from  this  work  I  commend  to  your  special  attention  the  chapters 
in  the  first  volume  that  establish  a  conclusive  damnatory  critique 
of  what  its  advocates  have  chosen  to  call  Realism.  The  great 
virtue  of  this  critique  is  its  vindication  of  Systematic  Truth  as 
the  only  valid  director  of  feeling  and  conduct,  and  its  implied 
definition  of  idealism  as  the  consistent  application  to  the  control 
of  desire  and  action  of  the  universal  logic  that  Truth  as  a  system 
involves:  nothing  stands  alone  and  isolated  in  the  universe 
present  to  genuine  thinking;  each  truth  rests  on  other  and  on  all. 
Let  us  keep  a  secure  hold  upon  this  view  of  what  defensible  ideal- 
ism is,  in  contrast  to  the  pseudo-idealism  that  means  the  pursuit 
of  sentimental  dreams  about  the  so-called  'ideal,'  and  the  utterly 
vague  aims  that  go  with  this.  Sound  idealism  is  simply  the  rule 
of  evidenced  judgment,  directed  by  the  primordial  Ideas,  over 
the  rest  of  life.  How  correct  it  is  as  a  theory  of  knowledge,  the 
act  by  which  the  individual,  as  thinker,  displays  its  universality 
of  view;  and  how  easy  the  non  seguitur  by  which,  for  instance, 
Hegel  and  his  school  suddenly  convert  this  doctrine  of  logic, 
correct  so  far  as  it  goes  or  can  go,  into  their  theory  of  Moni^; 
a  theory  of  Realism,  in  fact,  though  disguised  in  the  misleading 
name  of  Absolute  Idealism. 

It  is  interesting  to  notice,  in  the  continued  writings  of  our 
colleague,  that  as  the  years  have  gone  forward  his  views  have 
apparently  been  changing;  in  the  theory  of  knowledge,  possibly 
more  than  truth  will  warrant.  At  any  rate,  in  recent  publica- 
tions he  has  now  served  warning  on  us  that  he  need  no  longer  be 
counted  as  belonging  to  the  school  of  Hegel;  that,  indeed,  he 
never  did  cardinally  belong  there,  and  that,  as  some  early  reviewer 
has  said,  his  doctrines  are  more  akin  to  the  views  of  Schopenhauer 
than  to  those  of  Hegel.  We  may  venture  to  wonder  at  this  last 
announcement.  There  has  never  been  a  trace  of  pessimism  nor 
of  asceticism  in  Royce's  thinking,  nor  any  agreement  with 
Schopenhauer  other  than  the  prominence  which,  in  common 


238  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

with  James,  and  in  fact  with  nearly  every  other  thinker  in  the 
long  list  of  Harvard  philosophizing,  he  gives  to  what  he  calls 
Will,  though  in  a  sense  different  in  kind  from  Schopenhauer's 
and  also  from  James's.  This  nominal  Voluntarism  I  am  con- 
fident we  may  safely  discount,  as  inconsistent  with  our  thinker's 
idealistic  view,  so  far  as  this  is  true.  It  of  course  savors  of  the 
general  Elective  Theory  on  which  the  present  Harvard  university 
system  is  founded,  and,  however  really  it  may  violate  the  motto 
Veritas  borne  on  Harvard's  preferred  seal,  indicates  the  subtle 
influence  that  James's  voluntaristic  theory  of  the  psychologic 
world  of  'perception,'  as  an  assemblage  of  particulars  rendered 
'real'  by  our  selective  picking  out  from  the  undifferentiated 
mass  of  'sensation,'  exercised  upon  his  friend's  thinking  when 
this  came  upon  the  difficult  question  of  the  metaphysical  reality 
of  the  world  of  particular  selves,  and  the  preservation  of  the 
individual  person  notwithstanding  the  all-determining  fact  of 
God  as  the  Oversoul.  It  is  not  for  us  to  be  surprised  that  James 
himself  always  remained  dubious  over  this  translation  of  his 
psychological  into  a  metaphysical  doctrine,  wavering  to  the  end 
between  a  puzzled  though  admiring  sympathy  and  a  general 
pragmatic  scepticism  toward  every  view  tinged,  however  faintly, 
with  the  color  of  the  Absolute.  To  James,  of  course,  'absolute' 
whether  as  a  comparatively  humble  acolyte,  adjective  or  ad- 
verbial merely,  or  as  elevated  to  the  lordly  substantive  office  and 
made,  as  the  Absolute,  with  a  capital  A,  to  play  the  part  of  a 
Substitute  God,  was  a  conception  under  suspicion;  indeed,  almost 
under  ban.  The  deep-seated  agnosticism  that  lay  concealed  in 
Pragmatism  prohibited  the  doctrine  of  Truth  itself,  in  the 
historic  meaning  of  an  absolute  certainty,  and  required  a  new 
meaning  for  the  very  words  'truth'  and  'true,'  if  such  a  thing 
were  in  any  way  possible.  To  James  the  true  and  the  real,  or» 
rather,  the  true  as  an  attempted  depiction  of  the  real,  became  a 
strictly  partisan  matter;  as  he  used  often  to  say,  "A  question 
of  taste,  you  know."  Such  a  voluntaristic  philosophy,  consistent 
enough  with  'radical  empiricism'  and  its  really  inevitable  corol- 
laries of  scepticism  and  agnosticism,  is  in  fact  contradictory  to 
that  strong  and  profoundly  argued  idealism  of  The  World  and 


No.  3.]  JOSIAH  ROYCE.  239 

The  Individual,  which  has  logically  annulled  Realism  by  reducing 
it  to  the  unavoidable  and  ruinous  shuttling  from  materialism 
to  agnosticism,  from  agnosticism  to  materialism,  ever  back  and 
forth,  and  forced  the  thinking  holder  of  it  out  of  its  lines  and 
into  the  wide-open  field  of  Mysticism,  to  be  driven  thence,  again, 
into  the  clutches  of  Critical  Rationalism.  From  this  one  must 
gain  rescue  by  the  discovery  of  the  dialectical  nature  of  partial 
or  partisan  knowing,  and  by  insight  into  the  rational  harmonic 
that  carries  disputative  differences  up  into  the  larger  embrace 
of  interpretative  conciliatory  thought. 

It  is  on  this  strongly  reasoned  basis  of  a  logic  idealistic  in  the 
sense  that  it  replaces,  by  implication,  the  abstract  scheme  of  the 
mere  coherence  of  concepts  by  a  conference  of  thought  in  a  society 
of  intelligences,  guided,  in  its  very  initial  sources,  by  the  con- 
ciliatory Ideas  (the  True,  the  Beautiful,  the  Good)  that  provide 
a  wider  and  higher  region  of  interpretation  wherein  the  disputes 
of  partial  thinking  may  seek  and  find  reconciliation,  that  the 
sober  and  genuine  idealistic  philosophy  must  henceforth  build. 
Voluntarism  is  consistent  enough  with  Pragmatism,  but  it  cannot 
protect  itself,  nor  us,  against  sceptical  Indifferentism,  and 
cannot,  in  the  last  resort,  fortify  intelligence  against  materialism 
and  atheism.  When  'truth'  gets  translated  into  mere  prefer- 
ence of  feeling,  or  even  into  sturdy  resolve,  and  yet  remains,  after 
all,  but  an  uncertain  conjecture,  subject  to  revision,  and  sure  to 
come  to  this  in  the  lapse  of  time,  a  revision  that  with  the  lapse 
must  recur  and  recur  and  recur  in  perpetuum,  it  cannot  but  cease 
at  length  to  be  worth  the  trouble  of  the  guess  and  the  testing  by 
trial.  The  defect  of  Pragmatism  is  that  its  sole  achievement  is 
negative,  is  rejection.  It  is  a  factor,  of  course,  in  the  dialectic 
of  experience,  the  history  of  changing  judgments  in  and  con- 
cerning the  transient  world  of  the  senses ;  it  belongs  to  that  logic 
that  demands  the  correction  of  mistakes,  whether  private  or 
communal.     But  it  is  not  upon  the  level  of  the  affirmative  reason. 

Very  interesting  and  encouraging  is  it,  that  in  the  changes  of 
view,  whatever  else  they  may  be,  that  he  has  now  pubHcly 
announced,  we  can  notice  that  in  the  numerous  volumes  he  has 
published  since  his  lectures  at  Aberdeen  on  the  Gififord  Foundation, 


240  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Professor  Royce  has  continually  dwelt  more  and  more  upon  the 
notions  of  Loyalty  and  the  Community.  In  these  indications  of 
a  concrete  and  social  idealism,  we  who  earlier  than  he  have 
accepted  the  view  of  a  primordially  harmonic  pluralism  (if 
indeed  he  has  changed  in  that  direction),  may  naturally  take 
satisfaction  and  hope.  We  desire  the  aid  of  so  strong  a  man,  who, 
in  addition  to  his  native  gifts,  has  had  the  good  fortune  to  come 
to  such  a  fame  and  to  so  great  a  consequent  influence.  It  is  not 
true,  as  the  old  saying  boasts,  that  'truth  is  mighty  and  will 
prevail.'  It  will  prevail  if  men  are  on  the  search  for  it  and  on 
guard  for  its  security;  but  not  otherwise.  The  burden  is  upon 
us,  as  thinkers,  to  find  the  truth  that  is  true  on  the  largest  and 
most  assured  scale  for  our  human  nature,  to  seek  it  by  that 
weighty  and  mutually  interpretative  intercourse  of  thought  which 
the  aid  of  the  civilized  community  affords  each  of  us,  in  return 
for  the  fealty,  the  duty,  we  owe  to  it  and  pay  to  it,  and  to  our 
fellow-members  that  with  us  compose  it. 

An  aspect  of  these  changes  of  view,  indicated  rather  than 
clearly  explained.  Professor  Royce  has  recently  referred  to  his 
later  studies  of  the  logician  Charles  Peirce,  a  thinker  to  whom 
James  always  declared  himself  greatly  indebted,  and  to  whom 
it  would  almost  seem  that  Royce  has  now  turned,  after  the  loss 
of  his  great  friend,  as  if  to  render  justice  to  a  mind  not  sufficiently 
appreciated  before;  or,  possibly,  in  a  reverent  penitence  for  not 
having  during  his  friend's  lifetime  given  heed  enough  to  James's 
repeated  praises  of  Peirce. 

These  studies  in  Peirce,  we  are  told,  with  a  frank  sincerity 
wholly  to  be  praised,  have  resulted  in  a  change  of  view,  on  our 
colleague's  part,  in  the  theory  of  knowledge.  He  now  presents 
himself  as  an  adherent  and  developer  of  Pierce's  doctrine  in  this 
important  field  of  philosophy.  He  tells  us,  with  right  caution, 
that  he  is  by  no  means  sure  that  in  the  construing  and  inter- 
pretation he  has  put  on  Peirce's  views  he  would  have  had  their 
author's  own  approval;  but  the  new  theory  of  knowledge,  which 
Royce  holds  to  be  true,  and  of  high  importance,  is  set  forth  at  its 
full  in  the  second  volume  of  his  recent  work.  The  Problem  of 
Christianity.     I  may  take  it  for  granted,  of  course,  that  you  are 


No.  3.]  JOSIAH  ROYCE.  241 

all  familiar  with  this  new  theory,  and  its  triple  logic  of  perception, 
conception,  and  "interpretation,"  as  our  author  calls  it.  In  this 
last  term  he  appears  to  use  the  word  in  the  sense  of  the  clari- 
fication of  issues  between  disputing  parties,  alluding  to  the 
pacificatory  function  of  heralds  between  warring  armies  speaking 
different  tongues,  and  needing  to  have  their  contesting  purposes 
made  intelligible  and  susceptible  of  mutual  understanding  and 
compromise;  compromise,  however,  only  on  condition  of  larger 
advantages  accruing  from  peace  than  from  struggle. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  empiricism  of  Peirce,  fully  as  'radical' 
as  that  of  James,  may  not  have  invaded  the  high  and  soundly 
supported  idealism  of  Royce's  earlier  philosophical  activity. 
At  any  rate,  we  need  not  permit  it  to  weaken  our  own;  for  this 
'radical  empiricism'  is  a  glaring  case  of  incomplete  and  one- 
sided thinking,  capable  of  refutation,  and  in  fact  refuted  by 
Royce  himself  in  The  World  and  the  Individual,  and  the  other 
writings  belonging  to  his  idealistic  period,  if  that  has  passed. 
But  perhaps  in  this  reference  he  has  not  changed. 

In  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration  our  colleague  has  given  us  a 
list  of  the  three  names  that  he  reckons  foremost  in  the  history  of 
American  philosophy, — Jonathan  Edwards,  Emerson,  and  James. 
These  alone,  he  thinks,  have  commanded  alike  a  world-wide, 
especially  a  European,  attention.  For  my  own  part,  I  am  not 
satisfied  with  a  ranking  based  on  public  acceptance  and  fame 
alone.  Again  a  current  proverb  proves,  in  the  deepest  sense, 
to  be  deceptive:  Securus  judical  orbis  terrarum  is  far  from  true, 
even  as  an  historical  fact;  much  less,  on  the  scale  of  rational 
worth  and  merit.  Emerson  and  James  were  both  great  men  of 
letters,  great  writers;  yes,  great  thinkers,  if  you  will;  but  they 
do  not  belong  in  the  strict  list  of  philosophers,  the  one  a  moral 
sage  and  poet,  the  other  a  richly  endowed  and  greatly  generous 
human  character,  with  a  style  that  for  unaffected  manly  vigor 
has  hardly  been  surpassed,  perhaps  not  even  equalled,  and  a 
diction  so  brilliant  and  pungent,  often,  as  to  seem  to  pierce  and 
fuse  the  very  substance  and  being  of  the  objects  it  describes; 
I  yield  to  nobody  in  my  admiration  of  him  as  a  man  or  as  a 
powerful  writer.     Nor  in  a  lofty  estimate  of  Emerson,  the  very 


242  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

foremost  of  our  American  poets,  the  leading  writer  of  serious 
prose  in  his  century,  the  most  awaited,  most  stimulating  moral 
influence  in  the  world  of  his  day,  in  this  regard  surpassing  even 
his  friend  Carlyle.  But  both  look  out  of  place  in  a  series  with 
such  a  master  of  logic  and  technical  philosophy  as  Edwards; 
that  mastery  in  logic  is  a  cardinal  test  of  the  true  philosopher, 
and  neither  Emerson  nor  James  possessed  it.  Both,  on  the 
contrary,  did  their  best  to  discredit  it,  Emerson  by  taking  refuge 
in  mysticism,  James  by  an  attempt  through  psychology  to  set 
feeling  and  will  into  the  deciding  and  directive  place  in  conscious 
being. 

It  is  frightful,  when  one  stops  to  think  what  it  must  mean 
to  the  reality  of  a  moral  life  for  men,  for  their  duty,  for  a  true 
'reign  of  God'  in  the  soul,  to  hear  Emerson  glorifying  the 
Oversoul:  "We  lie  in  the  lap  of  immense  intelligence,"  he  says, 
"which  makes  us  receivers  of  its  truth  and  organs  of  its  activity. 
When  we  discern  justice,  when  we  discern  truth,  we  do  nothing 
of  ourselves,  but  allow  a  passage  to  its  beams."  {Self -Reliance, 
p.  56,  quoted,  too,  by  James  in  his  Human  Immortality.)  There 
were  no  doubt  two  Emersons,  as  James  has  rightly  pointed  out, 
the  plotinizing  Emerson  of  the  Oversoul  and  Emerson  the  in- 
stinctive New  Englander,  supremely  sensitive  to  individual  re- 
sponsibility, of  the  Voluntaries  and  the  New  England  Reformers. 
But  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  had  any  logic  wherewith  to 
defend  himself;  both  were  satisfied  with  mystic  insight,  incom- 
municable, and  the  method  of  mere  declaration:  Say  what  you 
see,  and  say  it  adequately,  and  there  will  be  no  need  of  argument. 
And  for  James,  all  argument,  the  whole  laborious  round  of  logic, 
ended  in  insoluble  dispute,  in  utter  moveless  loggerhead,  the 
death  of  decision.  The  only  way  out  of  this  was  to  listen  to 
your  felt  wishes,  choose  the  side  you  care  for,  put  your  will  into 
its  service,  and  strike  for  your  cause;  whether  it  win  or  lose, 
you  will  have  won,  in  the  sense  that  you  will  not  have  fallen  as  a 
malingerer  or  a  coward.  Of  which  we  must  in  sober  judgment  say, 
it  is  certainly  courage  of  a  sort,  but  a  courage  to  no  purpose: 
c'est  magnifiqiie,  mais  ce  n'est  pas  la  guerre. 

We  ought  to  think  of  both  Emerson  and  James,  not  that  they 


No.  3-]  JOSIAH  ROYCE.  243 

were  not  at  least  as  great  as  Jonathan  Edwards,  but  that  more 
likely  they  were  both  much  greater,  and  that  their  world  is  right 
in  undoubtedly  supposing  them  so.  Only,  they  are  out  of  the  true 
perspective  when  set  in  a  row  with  Edwards;  or,  better  perhaps, 
Edwards  is  in  the  wrong  perspective  when  placed  in  the  line 
with  them.  James,  it  seems  to  me,  belongs  quite  justly  in  a  list 
following  Emerson ;  in  a  list  of  four  English  prose  writers  of  the 
nineteenth  century  who  deservedly  won  the  greatest  notice  and 
the  widest  influence, — Carlyle,  Emerson,  Mathew  Arnold, 
James:  the  last  at  some  distance  below  his  predecessor,  just  as 
Arnold  fell  discernibly  below  Emerson  and  Carlyle.  The  four 
were  powerful  thinking  writers  rather  than  philosophers;  some- 
thing probably  greater  than  philosophers.  Are  not  sages  and 
poets  men  of  larger  compass  than  philosophers  as  such?  Unless  I  ^^ 
indeed,  like  Plato,  philosophers  should  be  all  three  at  once,  andJ 
so,  again  like  Plato,  become  incomparable  and  live  in  all  ages. 

If  the  list  of  strictly  philosophic  thinkers  in  our  country, 
rightly  headed  by  Jonathan  Edwards,  who  partly  settled  the 
question  as  to  the  seat  of  human  freedom  by  showing  incontest- 
ably  where  it  is  not,  that  it  is  not  in  the  will,  is  now  to  be  con-  ' 
tinued,  it  is  little  to  be  questioned  that  the  place  our  colleague, 
in  such  quiet  and  natural,  though  indeed  unavoidable,  self- 
forgetfulness,  assigned  to  his  gifted  friend  James,  really  belongs 
to  himself.  I  would  insert  other  names  in  the  list,  on  the  ground 
of  merit  rather  than  public  note — President  Samuel  Johnson 
(disciple  of  Berkeley  and  stimulator  of  Edwards),  James  Marsh, 
Rowland  Hazard,  Joseph  LeConte,  John  Fiske,  Thomas  David- 
son, George  Morris,  Carroll  Everett,  Elisha  Mulford,  and,  above 
all,  William  Torrey  Harris,  so  long  our  unequalled  Commissioner 
of  Education,  our  master  scholar  in  Hegel,  of  the  largest  inter- 
national recognition;  the  series  has  not  been  brief,  though  I 
confine  it,  of  course,  to  those  who  have  passed  from  the  living. 
But  let  our  colleague  accept  the  honor  that  events,  seconding 
his  native  powers,  have  conferred  upon  him.  Let  him  rejoice, 
in  common  with  us  all,  at  his  great  good  fortune.  Seldom  is  it 
that  genius  of  his  especial  sort  meets  with  such  general  public 
acknowledgment:  the  taste  nowadays  is  for  intelligence  in  other 


244  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

fields,  more  in  the  public  sight,  more  accessible  to  the  multitude; 
more  directly  advantageous,  also.  As  Professor  Royce,  I  may 
properly  repeat,  is  still  far  from  being  old,  still  not  past  middle 
life,  we  have  the  hope,  yes,  the  expectation,  that  he  will  continue 
to  contribute,  as  he  has  hitherto  done,  to  the  stores  that  enrich 
our  calling.  I  heartily  congratulate  him  again  upon  the  merited 
honor  of  the  present  occasion,  and  wish  him  health,  continued 
life  and  powers,  and  yet  added  successes. 

G.  H.  HowisoN. 

University  of  California, 
Berkeley. 


VOLUNTARISM  IN  THE  ROYCEAN  PHILOSOPHY. 

I  AM  not  about  to  inflict  upon  you  a  belated  discovery  that 
voluntarism  is  an  integral  factor  in  the  Roycean  theory  of 
knowledge.  Were  it  not  obvious  of  itself,  we  have  the  emphatic 
utterances  of  Professor  Royce  himself  in  his  address  to  this 
Association  twelve  years  ago.  Following  a  clew  in  that  paper, 
it  is  my  purpose  to  present  some  considerations  relative  to  the 
relationship  of  voluntarism  and  intellectualism^  in  the  earliest 
phase  of  Mr.  Royce's  published  philosophy,  thinking  that  the 
matter  has  historic  interest  and  that  it  involves  points  relevant 
to  forming  a  critical  judgment  of  his  later  developments.  Let  me 
begin  by  quoting  Mr.  Royce  upon  his  own  early  attitude.^  In 
1 88 1  he  wrote  a  paper  in  which  he  "expressed  a  sincere  desire  to 
state  the  theory  of  truth  wholly  in  terms  of  an  interpretation  of 
our  judgments  as  present  acknowledgments,  since  it  made  these 
judgments  the  embodiments  of  conscious  attitudes  that  I  then 
conceived  to  be  essentially  ethical  and  to  be  capable  of  no  re- 
statement in  terms  of  any  absolute  warrant  whatever."  And, 
referring  to  his  change  of  views  in  the  last  respect,  he  says: 
"I  am  still  of  the  opinion  that  judging  is  an  activity  guided  by 
essentially  ethical  motives.  I  still  hold  that,  for  any  truth  seeker, 
the  object  of  his  belief  is  also  the  object  of  his  will  to  believe. 
...  I  still  maintain  that  every  intelligent  soul,  however  weak 
or  confused,  recognizes  no  truth  except  that  which  intelligently 
embodies  its  own  present  purpose. "^  The  statement  is  explicit. 
Taken  in  connection  with  the  earlier  position,  it  arouses  curiosity 
as  to  the  reasons  for  the  transition  from  subordination  of  in- 
tellect to  will  to  the  reversed  position. 

I  first  turn  to  the  paper  of  1881.^    The  paper  was  one  of  the 

1  To  avoid  misunderstanding  I  would  say  that  intellectualism  is  here  used  not 
in  antithesis  to  empiricism  or  to  sensationalism,  but  to  denote  any  philosophy  which 
treats  the  subject-matter  of  experience  as  primarily  and  fundamentally  an  object 
of  cognition. 

2  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  13,  p.  117. 

3  Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy,  Vol.  IS,  p.  360. 

245 


246  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

addresses  at  the  Kantian  centenary.  Its  title  is,  significantly, 
"Kant's  Relation  to  Modern  Philosophical  Progress."  It  makes 
an  attempt  to  assess,  on  one  hand,  certain  contemporary  move- 
ments in  the  light  of  Kant's  critical  principles,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  indicate  the  ways  in  which  Post-Kantian  thought  sug- 
gests a  reform  in  Kant  himself.  The  first  part  holds  that  Kant's 
criticism  still  bars  the  way  to  every  attempt  at  a  philosophical 
ontology.  The  ontological  monism  of  Mind-stufi",  of  Pan- 
logism,^  of  Alogism  alike  stand  condemned  as  illegitimate  ex- 
cursions into  ontological  dogmas.  The  reforming  portion  centers 
about  the  Kantian  dualism  of  sense  and  reason.  The  difficulty 
left  over  by  Kant  is  clearly  stated :  A  given  category,  say  causal- 
ity, is  nothing  unless  applied  to  experience.  But  how  can  it 
be  applicable?  Only  in  case  experience  furnishes  instances  of 
uniform  succession.  But  in  that  case,  why  the  category? 
Thought  is  not  needed.  Or  if  it  is  said  that  it  is  necessary  to 
introduce  necessity,  how  about  necessity?  If  sense  experience 
doesn't  justify  it,  then  it  too  is  futile.  If  it  does,  thought  is 
superfluous.  Either  sense  already  conforms  to  order  or  else  it 
is  inexorably  at  odds  with  it.  Now  Royce's  solution  is,  in 
brief,  as  follows.  Sensuous,  irresistible  presence,  presence  wholly 
unquestionable,  absolutely  certain,  is  an  ultimate  fact:  a  datum. 
Spatiality  (as  had  just  been  claimed  by  Professor  James)  exists 
also  as  just  such  a  simple  irresistible  quale.  Succession  as  instan- 
taneous sequence   is  also   such   a  datum.     What   thought,  as 

1  With  respect  to  the  problem  of  the  evolution  of  Royce's  later  philosophy 
in  its  entirety,  it  is  extremely  important  to  note  the  ground  for  rejection  of  that 
Panlogism  which  was  later  accepted.  It  is  connected  with  the  fact  of  evolution. 
How  can  an  Absolute  Rational  Whole  change?  How  can  it  consist  with  progress 
from  an  earlier  lower  to  a  later  higher?  Or  how  can  we  think  of  every  stage  of  the 
historical  progress  as  itself  a  goal,  when  "the  first  starving  family,  or  singed  moth, 
or  broken  troth,  or  wasted  eflort,  or  wounded  bird,  is  an  indictment  of  the  universal 
reason"?  "Either  evolution  is  a  necessity  .  .  .  and  the  Absolute  must  be  con- 
ceived as  in  bonds,  or  else  it  is  irrational  and  the  Logos  must  be  conceived  as 
blundering."  I  call  this  ground  of  rejection  extremely  important,  for  surely  the 
key-note  of  all  Royce's  later  philosophy  is  the  formulation  of  a  way  to  combine  the 
notion  of  the  eternal  moment  with  genuine  struggle  and  defeat  in  time.  The 
ethical  connecting  link  in  the  Religious  Aspect  is  the  conviction  that  all  genuine 
virtue  or  moral  good  exists  at  the  point  of  overcoming  evil.  Hence  the  Absolute 
would  be  lacking  in  moral  quality  unless  in  its  eternal  changelessness  it  included 
and  overcame  the  temptations  and  struggles  of  the  finite  and  changing. 


No.  3.]     VOLUNTARISM  IN  THE  ROYCEAN  PHILOSOPHY.        247 

essentially  spontaneous,  essentially  active,  does  is  to  give  the 
immediate  momentary  datum  a  reference  beyond  the  present 
moment.  However,  the  reference  is  not  at  first  to  an  external 
cause.  The  primary  reference  is  a  time  reference.  In  every 
cognitive  act  there  is  an  assertion  that  the  given  data  stand  for, 
symbolize,  recall,  resemble,  or  otherwise  relate  to  data  that  were 
real  in  an  experience  no  longer  existent.  In  short,  thought 
primarily  asserts  or  acknowledges  the  past.  Then  there  is 
acknowledgement  of  the  future:  the  synthesis  of  anticipation. 
Chief  of  all  there  is  acknowledgment  of  other  conscious  beings 
than  ourselves,  acknowledgment  of  a  universe  of  reality  external 
to  ourselves.  Now  "for  the  objects  of  these  acts  no  possible  the- 
oretical evidence  can  be  given  more  nearly  ultimate  than  the 
one  great  fact  that  through  acknowledgment  and  anticipation 
they  are  projected  from  the  present  moment  into  the  past,  future, 
and  possible  world  of  truth."'  And  finally,  "the  goal  of  philosophy 
can  be  found  only  in  an  ethical  philosophy.  The  ultimate 
justification  of  the  act  of  projecting  and  acknowledging  the  world 
of  truth  constructed  from  sensible  data"  must  be  found  in  the 
significance — i.  e.,  in  the  moral  worth  of  this  activity  itself. 
In  short,  the  act  of  thought  or  judgment  by  which  sense  data 
become  a  knowable  world  of  objects  and  a  world  of  other  minds 
is  itself  an  act,  an  affirmation  of  the  spontaneity  of  consciousness. 
Hence  it  is  impossible  to  get  behind  it  intellectually  or  give  it 
an  absolute  warranty:  it  has  to  be  justified  in  terms  of  its  own 
worth  as  an  act, — that  is  to  say,  ethically. 

The  student  of  Royce's  writings  will  see  here  certain  ideas 
which  are  found  in  all  his  later  writings:  The  acceptance  of 
empirical  sense  data  as  ultimate,  things  simply  to  be  accepted 
as  they  are ;  the  conception  of  them  as  intrinsically  momentary,  yet 
while  including  in  themselves  the  fact  of  immediateor  instantaneous 
sequence;  the  conviction  that  the  problem  of  knowledge  is,  on 
the  one  hand,  the  problem  of  the  temporal  reference  of  these 
data,  and,  on  the  other,  the  problem  of  their  reference  to  other 
minds,  to  orders  of  experience  transcending  our  own;  the  belief 
that  knowing  is  an  act,  an  assertion,  an  acknowledging.  Con- 
joined with   them  is  the  unfamiliar  text  that  the  active  side, 


248  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

the  voluntaristic  and  ethical  side,  is  ultimate,  and  that  no  the- 
oretical justification  for  it  can  be  found.  In  his  Religious 
Aspect  of  Philosophy  published  only  four  years  later,  we  find 
established,  however,  the  reversed  relationship :  we  find  set  forth 
the  Roycean  all-inclusive  thought  which  eternally  realizes  itself 
in  all  fragmentary  and  partial  acts  of  will.  From  henceforth 
acts  of  will  are  not  self-justifying.  The  ethical  is  transcended 
in  the  cognitive. 

I  make  no  pretence  to  tell  how  the  change  came  about,  in  the 
sense  of  ability  to  reconstruct  Mr.  Royce's  mental  biography. 
There  are,  however,  a  number  of  indications  of  the  logical 
sources  of  the  change,  which  are  found  in  the  Religious  Aspect; 
and  to  them  I  invite  your  attention.  In  the  first  place,  the  Fich- 
tean  tone  of  the  acknowledgement  in  the  first  essay  of  the  reality 
of  other  experiences,  other  wills,  than  our  own  is  evident.  It  is 
not  so  much  a  bare  fact  that  we  acknowledge  them,  as  it  is  a 
supreme  moral  duty  to  acknowledge  them.  Our  natural,  carnal 
acknowledgment  is  not  of  them  as  Experiences  like  our  own 
but  rather  as  factors  which  affect  our  own  well-being:  selfishness 
is  the  radical  moral  evil.  This  motif,  implicit  in  the  earlier  docu- 
ment, is  explicit  in  the  Religious  Aspect.  But  recognition  of 
this  fact  brings  with  it  the  recognition  of  the  reality  of  clash  of 
wills,  and  of  the  need  of  an  organization  of  wills  or  aims.  To 
restate  the  treatment,  rather  than  to  try  to  paraphrase  it,  if 
my  own  cannot  be  the  ultimate  law  for  other  wills  neither  can  the 
will  of  any  other  be  the  law  of  my  will.  There  must  be  an 
inclusive  organization  which  determines  the  aim  of  each  alike. 
The  same  logic  applies  within  one's  own  purposes;  they  too  con- 
flict and  clash.  Scepticism  and  pessimism  are  but  the  conscious- 
ness of  this  clash,  in  recognizing  that  amid  plurality  of  aims  there 
can  be  no  ground  for  one  making  any  onXsupreme,  and  no  guar- 
anty of  abiding  satisfaction.  Moral  certainty  and  moral  con- 
fidence alike  demand  an  organization  of  anns.  Now  such  an 
organization  cannot  be  itself  an  afi"air  of  will ;  it  r^^ust  be  a  matter 
of  fact,  a  matter  of  reality  or  else  of  unreality,  and  hence  some- 
thing whose  primary  relationship  is  to  knowledge.  If  it  is  valid, 
it  is  not  because  of  anything  in  the  "moral  worth  of  the  activity 


No,  3.]     VOLUNTARISM  IN  THE  ROYCEAN  PHILOSOPHY.        249 

itself"  or  it  is  just  that  worth  which  is  put  in  jeopardy  by  the 
conflict,  the  plurality,  of  wills.  The.  moral  worth  of  the  will 
can  be  established  only  on  the  basis  of  an  organized  harmony  of 
wills  as  an  established  fact.  Whether  such  an  organization 
exists  or  not  is  a  matter  of  truth,  of  knowledge,  not  of  volition. 
For  if  one  say  that  one  wills  that  such  an  organization  exist,  the 
dialectic  recurs.  This  is  but  an  individual  will;  an  assertion  of 
one  will  among  many.  And  why  should  its  assertion  of  an 
organization  of  wills  be  any  better  than  any  other  assertion  of 
bare  will? 

In  his  Defense  of  Philosophic  Doubt  Mr.  Balfour^  had  stated 
expressly  that  preference  for  one  ethical  end  over  another  must 
itself  be  a  purely  ethical  matter — that  is  a  matter  of  choice  un- 
derivable  from  any  theoretical  judgment  whether  scientific  or 
metaphysical.  Each  end  founds  a  system  of  propositions  all  of 
which  are  logically  coherent  with  one  another.  If  revenge  is  an 
end-in-itself  for  me,  then  the  proposition  prescribing  shooting  a 
man  from  behind  a  hedge  is  a  dependent  ethical  proposition 
belonging  to  that  system.  It  is  not  knowledge  but  arbitrary 
choice  which  determines  the  end  which  fixes  the  dependent 
logical  or  theoretical  system.  It  is  fairly  open  to  question  whether 
such  a  conclusion  does  not  follow  from  the  principles  set  forth  in 
Royce's  earlier  essay,  when  the  clash  of  aims  or  acknowledging 
wills  is  taken  into  account.  And,  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Royce, 
"The  reader  may  ask:  '  Is  all  this  the  loftiest  idealism,  or  is  it 
simply  philosophic  scepticism  about  the  basis  of  ethics?'  " 

The  moral  will  depends  then  upon  an  insight  into  a  harmonious 
organization  of  all  wills — an  end  in  which  pluralistic  aims  cease 
to  be  conflicting  because  they  are  taken  up  as  elements  into  one 
inclusive  aim.  But  does  such  an  organization  exist?  This 
leads  us  to  the  discussion  of  knowledge  and  the  criterion  of  truth. 
The  conclusion  is  the  absolutism  of  an  all-compreheriding  eternal 
consciousness  which  has  remained  the  central  tenet  of  Mr.  Royce's 
writings.  "All  reality  must  be  present  to  the  Unity  of  the 
Infinite  Thought"  {Religious  Aspect,  p.  433).  "The  possibility 
of  an  ontology  and  the  supposed  nature  of  the  ideal  absolute 

^  Religious  Aspect,  Preface,  and  pp.  128-130. 


250  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

knowledge"  which,  true  to  the  spirit  of  Kant,  Mr.  Royce  had 
denied  in  his  earlier  essay ,^  is  now  asserted  as  the  sole  way  out  of 
ethical  scepticism.  The  transition  to  Absolutism  is  through 
{a)  discovery  of  the  scepticism  latent  in  voluntarism  when 
that  is  made  ultimate:  (6)  in  the  demand  for  a  community  of 
aims  or  organization  of  wills  i^  (c)  the  discovery  that  all  recog- 
nition of  ignorance  and  error,  all  sceptical  doubt  involves  an 
appeal  to  a  Judger  or  Thought  which  included  both  the  original 
object  and  the  original  judgment  about  it.  The  analogy  of 
such  a  comprehensive  judger  with  the  required  moral  organiza- 
tions of  wills  which,  in  their  separateness,  clash,  is  obvious  enough. 
In  being  reduced  to  a  secondary  place,  voluntarism  is  not, 
however,  superseded.  It  persists,  first,  in  the  conception  of  the 
method  of  approach  to  Absolutism,  and,  secondly,  within  the 
conception  of  the  Absolute  itself,  (i)  The  first  step  out  of  the 
world  of  doubt  is  through  the  World  of  Postulates — a  conception 
substantially  identical  with  the  acknowledging  activity  of  the 
earlier  essay.  The  external  world  may  be  regarded  as  an  assump- 
tion, as  a  postulate,  which  satisfies  certain  familiar  human  needs.' 
Subjected  to  analysis  this  postulate  turns  out  to  be,  in  the  rough, 
"an  active  assumption  or  acknowledgment  of  something  more 
than  the  data  of  consciousness."  The  immediate  data  are  of 
that  fragmentary  and  transient  nature  which  was  earher  noted. 
Hence  judgment  must  do  more  than  reduce  these  present  data 
to  order ;  it  must  assert  that  context  beyond  them  in  which  they 
exist  and  in  which  they  have  their  real  meaning  and  truth.  This 
is,  again,  the  corrected  restatement  of  the  Kantian  problem.  We 
are  not  faced  with  an  incredible  act  of  thought  which  forms  sense- 
data  as  such,  but  with  the  act  of  thought  which  supplements  the 
specific  and  empirical  givens,  in  their  temporal  limitations,  with 
the  larger  setting  which  gives  them  objectivity.  This  restate- 
ment at  one  stroke  does  away  with  the  trans-empirical  Ding-an- 

>  J.  S.  P..  XV.  p.  371. 

» The  student  of  Royce  will  be  interested  in  comparing  this  with  the  explicit 
doctrine  of  the  Community  in  Royce's  latest  work.  Peirce's  influence  is  presumably 
effective  in  the  earlier  as  well  as  the  later  writing,  though  it  is  less  explicit  in  the 
Religious  Aspect. 

'  Religious  Aspect,  p.  292. 


No.  3-]     VOLUNTARISM  IN  THE  ROYCEAN  PHILOSOPHY.         251 

sich,  putting  in  the  place  of  a  trans-empirical  Reality,  a  trans- 
momentary  one,  and  with  the  subjectivistic  character  of  sense- 
data,  in  any  sense  of  subjectivism  which  identifies  them  with  a 
particular  knowing  self; — since  sense-data  are  given  in  the  most 
emphatic  sense  of  given. 

The  sketch  which  Royce  sets  forth  of  the  psychology  of  the 
process  of  the  postulating  activity  of  thought  makes  explicit 
the  voluntarism  implicit  in  the  idea  of  the  postulate.  It  is  quite 
unnecessary  to  recall  its  details  to  you.  The  preface  of  the  book 
makes  an  acknowledgement  to  Professor  James,  and  the  address 
of  1903  to  which  I  referred  at  the  outset  expressly  connects  the 
influence  of  James  with  this  voluntarism.  The  activity  which 
transforms  and  transcends  the  immediate  data  is,  psychologically, 
of  the  nature  of  attention;  attention  is  essentially  will,  and  it 
expresses  interest.^ 

A  voluntaristic  element,  persisting  all  through  Royce's  philos- 
ophy, is  seen  in  his  treatment  of  a  cognitive  idea.  An  idea  to  be 
cognitive  must  be  a  part  of  a  judgment,  or  itself  an  implicit 
judgment.  For  a  judgment  to  be  true  or  untrue  means  that  it 
agrees  or  does  not  agree  with  its  object — an  object  external  to 
the  ideas  connected  in  the  judgment.  Yet  the  judgment  must 
always  have  something  which  indicates  what  one  of  the  many 
objects  of  the  world  it  picks  out  for  its  own,  which  one  it  cog- 
nitively  refers  to.  In  other  words,  the  cognitive  idea  is,  in  its 
objective  reference,  an  intent.  The  voluntaristic  implications  of 
the  cognitive  idea  as  intent  are  in  no  way  elaborated  in  this 
document  as  they  are,  for  example,  in  The  World  and  The  Indi- 
vidual, but  the  root  idea  is  present. 

It  is  no  part  of  this  paper  to  follow  the  logic  of  the  treatment  of 
the  possibility  of  error  and  the  method  which  leads  to  the  con- 
clusion: "All  reality  must  be  present  to  the  Unity  of  the  Infinite 
Thought"  (p.  433).  The  purpose  of  the  paper  hmits  me  to 
noting,  first,  that  we  have  now  found  the  ethical  desideratum — 
the  ontological  reality  of  an  organized  harmony  of  all  aims. 
For  being  a  complete  thought,  a  complete  knower,  it  must  have 
present  in  it  all  desires  and  purposes,  and  being  a  complete  or 

1  Religious  Aspect,  pp.  308-324. 


252  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

perfect  knower,  it  must  also  present  in  itself  the  realities  in  which 
aims  find  their  realizations.  Secondly,  we  note  that  in  the 
formulations  of  this  absolute  knowing  consciousness  intellec- 
tualistic  considerations  predominate  to  a  greater  extent  than  in 
Mr.  Royce's  subsequent  formulations.  The  Infinite  Truth  is 
conceived  by  predilection  as  Knower;  it  is  referred  to  as  Seer, 
as  Spectator,  as  Judger.  The  function  of  infinite  Thought  in 
knowing  our  aims  and  knowing  the  objects  in  which  they  are 
fulfilled  is  most  dwelt  upon.  In  the  treatment  of  the  problem  of 
evil,  however,  that  voluntaristic  aspect  of  the  Absolute  which 
is  made  so  explicit  in  later  writings  appears  in  germ.  Goodness 
is  not  mere  innocence  but  is  transcending  of  evil.  In  the  divine 
our  evil  is  present  but  is  transcended  in  good.  But  such  tran- 
scendence is  by  way  of  conquest.  The  cognitive  Seer  possesses 
also  a  Universal  Will  realized  in  it.^ 

It  is  not  my  intention  to  engage  in  criticism  of  either  the  con- 
clusion or  the  method  followed  in  reaching  it.  I  shall,  however, 
indulge  in  a  few  comments  which  may  suggest  the  direction 
which  my  criticism  would  take  if  occasion  and  time  permitted. 
In  the  first  place,  I  would  point  out  that  all  solutions  are  relative 
because  relevant  to  the  problem  from  which  they  set  out.  In 
the  last  analysis,  everything  depends  upon  the  way  in  which  the 
problem  is  formed  and  formulated.  With  Mr.  Royce  the  problem 
is  fixed  by  the  results  of  the  Kantian  philosophy,  taken  in  its 
broad  sense.  It  seems  axiomatic  to  him  that  the  problem  of 
knowledge  is  the  problem  of  connection  of  sense  data  which  are 
facts  of  consciousness  with  the  spontaneous  constructive  activity 
of  thought  or  judging — itself  a  fact  of  consciousness.^  It  is 
significant  that  his  discussion  of  the  possibility  of  error  sets  out 
with  a  provisional  acceptance  of  Ueberweg's  definition  of  judg- 
ment as  "Consciousness  about  the  objective  validity  of  a  sub- 
jective union  of  ideas''  (italics  mine). 

*  Religious  Aspect,  pp.  456-59. 

*  In  the  first  published  writing  of  Mr.  Royce  with  which  I  happen  to  be  familiar, 
entitled,  "Schiller's  Ethical  Studies"  in  the  Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy, 
Vol.  XV,  p.  385,  the  peculiarity  of  Kant  is  stated  as  follows:  "Kant's  philosophy 
is  a  glorification  not  of  self  but  of  Consciousness.  In  Consciousness  is  all  knowledge 
rooted,  through  Consciousness  is  all  truth  known,"  etc. 


No.  3.]     VOLUNTARISM  IN  THE  ROYCEAN  PHILOSOPHY.         253 

My  second  line  of  comment  may  be  introduced  by  reference 
to  the  fact  that  I  have  spoken  of  the  voluntarism  of  Royce,  not 
of  his  pragmatism.  I  have  done  so  in  part  because  pragmatism 
(while  it  may  be  construed  in  terms  of  facts  of  consciousness, 
and  so  be  identified  with  a  psychological  voluntarism)  may  be 
stated  in  non-psychical  terms.  But  in  greater  part  it  is  because 
the  original  statement  of  Royce,  the  one  where  a  critical  volun- 
tarism still  lords  it  over  an  ontological  Absolutism,  conceives 
will  purely  as  Act.  It  is  the  act  of  Acknowledging  which  is 
emphasized.  There  is  no  reference  to  determination  or  measure 
by  consequences.  Now  Peirce  repudiated  just  such  a  position. 
He  says,  referring  to  Kant,  that  this  type  of  position  would  be 
Practicalism,  and  that  he  adopted  the  word  Pragmatism,  still 
following  a  Kantian  suggestion,  to  emphasize  empirical  con- 
sequences. The  importance  attached  by  James  to  consequences, 
last  things,  as  a  test  of  pragmatism,  is  well  known. 

Voluntarism  rather  than  pragmatism  is  found  in  the  Roycean 
notion  of  judgment.  When  intent  or  purpose  is  conceived  of  as 
the  essence  of  judgment  or  cognitive  idea,  the  intent  is  to  know. 
The  reference  is  intellectualistic;  connection  with  the  object  in- 
tended is  cognitive,  not  practical.  As  "attention  constantly 
tends  to  make  our  consciousness  more  definite  and  less  complex" 
(p.  316),  so  of  the  process  of  thought  knowing,  it  is  said:  "The 
aim  of  the  whole  process  is  to  reach  as  complete  and  united  a 
conception  of  reality  as  is  possible,  a  conception  wherein  the 
greatest  fullness  of  data  shall  be  combined  with  the  greatest 
simplicity  of  conception"  (p.  357).  Construing  the  operation  of 
fulfilling  a  supreme  cognitive  interest  in  terms  of  purpose  and 
will  is  a  very  different  thing  from  construing  the  cognitive 
interest  in  terms  of  a  process  of  fulfilment  of  other  interests, 
vital,  social,  ethical,  esthetic,  technological,  etc. 

Finally,  just  because  consequences  and  the  plurality  of  non- 
intellectual  interests  which  cognition  serves  are  ignored,  the 
ethical  voluntarism  of  the  essay  of  1881  is  itself  an  absolutism — 
ethical  to  be  sure,  but  absolutism.  The  acknowledging  ac- 
tivity must  finally  be  justified  by  "the  significance — i.  e.,  the 
moral  worth — of  this  activity  itself."     It  would  be  hard  to  find 


254  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

anything  less  congenial  to  the  ethical  side  of  pragmatism  than  a 
doctrine  which  justified  moral  purpose  and  motive  by  something 
residing  in  its  own  activity,  instead  of  in  the  consequences  which 
the  activity  succeeds  in  making  out  of  original  vital  and  social 
interests  in  their  interaction  with  objects.  Putting  the  matter 
somewhat  more  technically,  the  transition  from  the  voluntarism 
of  the  early  essay  to  the  intellectual  absolutism  of  the  later  book 
was  indeed  logically  necessary.  A  will  which  is  absolute  is 
purely  arbitrary,  and  its  arbitrariness  leads  to  scepticism  and 
pessimism  for  the  reasons  pointed  out  by  Royce.  'Will'  needs 
a  rational  measure  of  choice,  of  preference,  in  the  selection  and 
disposition  of  ends.  If  it  does  not  find  this  measure  in  a  coor- 
dinated foresight  of  the  consequences  which  depends  upon  acting 
from  a  given  intent,  it  must  find  it  in  some  pre-existing  Reality, 
which,  of  course,  is  something  to  be  known.  In  short,  what  the 
transition  from  the  voluntarism  of  the  earlier  essay  to  the  in- 
tellectualism  of  the  later  exhibits,  is  not  a  change  from  pragmatism 
to  absolutism  but  a  recognition  of  the  objective  absolutism 
latent  in  any  ethical  absolutism.  I  would  go  as  far  as  to  suggest 
that  the  ulterior  issue  involved  in  the  theory  of  knowledge  is 
whether  regulative  principles  have  a  prospective  and  eventual 
reference,  or  whether  they  depend  upon  something  antecedently 
given  as  an  object  of  certitude — be  it  fixed  ready-made  goods, 
fixed  ready-made  rules,  or  fixed  Absolute. 

John  Dewey. 

Columbia  University. 


NOVUM  ITINERARIUM  MENTIS  IN  DRUM. 

IT  seems  to  be  the  fashion  nowadays  in  Germany,  both  in 
philosophical  and  in  military  circles,  to  connect  the  war,  or 
at  least  Germany's  part  therein,  with  the  teachings  of  the  great 
German  idealists.  It  is  not  at  all  strange  that  this  should  be  so. 
Whenever  any  nation  is  at  war  and  patriotism  rises  to  a  high 
pitch,  there  is  always  a  marked  deepening  of  religious  sentiment, 
— it  is  as  much  so  in  France  today  as  in  Germany, — and  one 
fondly  tries  to  tie  up  one's  cause  to  the  teaching  of  the  great 
spiritual  leaders  of  the  past.  "Our  cause  is  the  righteous  cause, 
and  the  God  of  battles  is  with  us."  Thus  it  ever  was,  and  ever 
will  be,  no  matter  what  one's  philosophy,  for  the  nation  that  does 
not  do  this  will  engage  in  war  listlessly  and  surely  perish.  To  be 
sure,  outside  of  Germany  one  finds  a  greater  hospitality  toward 
the  spiritual  leaders  of  other  nations  than  one's  own.  The 
Germans  have  come  to  view  themselves  as  in  some  peculiar  sense 
the  chosen  people.  God  has  spoken  to  them  as  to  no  other  race, 
and  they  are  convinced  that  they  have  a  special  mission  and 
duty  as  the  representatives  of  the  fundamental  ideas  of  civiliza- 
tion. 

It  is  not  strange  that  the  Germans  should  invoke  the  imposing 
figures  of  Kant  and  Fichte.  But  one  is  indeed  surprised  to  find 
thinkers  of  our  own  land  making  these  idealists  responsible,  not 
only  for  Germany's  part  in  the  war,  but  even  for  the  whole  policy 
of  'frightfulness,'  and  seriously  warning  us  that  if  we  would  be 
politically  saved,  we  must  once  for  all  turn  our  backs  on  Kant 
with  his  antiquated  belief  in  truth,  in  eternal  principles  of  right, 
and  in  a  spiritual  realm  distinct  from  the  realm  of  nature — and  be 
baptized  in  the  flowing  stream  of  pragmatism.  It  is  true  that 
in  Fichte's  writings,  from  the  first,  the  concepts  of  God  and  the 
ego  have  a  tantalizing  way  of  running  together;  and,  after  the 
battle  of  Jena,  the  resulting  exalted  personality  was  thoroughly 
Teutonized.  It  is  true  that  Hegel  was  a  trimmer,  and  that  he 
accommodated  his  philosophy  so  as  to  make  it  find  its  fulfilment 

255 


256  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

in  the  Prussian  state,  and  that  he  HegeUzed  Christianity  to  give 
it  reUgious  sanction.  But  these  are  the  weaknesses  of  great 
men,  illustrations,  perhaps,  of  the  chief  weakness  of  a  great 
race.  This  is  insolent  egotism,  not  philosophy  at  all.  But 
surely  chauvinism  was  not  invented  in  Germany,  any  more  than 
jingoism  was  born  in  France.  It  is  a  temper  of  mind  that  is 
independent  of  race,  and  not  limited  to  men  of  any  philosophical 
persuasion.     It  is  just  a  common  human  failing. 

If  any  philosophy  were  to  be  singled  out  as  on  trial  in  this 
war,  it  would  rather  seem  to  be  a  ruthless  materialism,  which 
had  found  expression  in  Realpolitik,  and  adopted  an  elastic 
pragmatic  interpretation  of  the  true  and  the  good.  But  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  we  cannot  settle  our  philosophical  differences  in 
any  such  simple  fashion,  or  decide  for  or  against  any  political 
philosophy  by  pointing  to  Germany  as  the  abs chreckendes  Beispiel, 
either  of  idealism,  or  of  pragmatism,  or  of  realism,  or  of  any 
other  philosophy.  To  attempt  to  do  so  would  merely  result  in 
calling  each  other  names. 

One  thing  is  evident.  The  European  conflict  has  brought 
each  of  the  nations  engaged  therein  to  a  collective  self-conscious- 
ness unrealized  before.  There  are  indications  of  a  similar  awak- 
ening in  our  own  land,  and  it  is  incumbent  upon  us  to  try  to 
discover  the  political  philosophy,  if  any  such  there  be,  that  under- 
lies our  efforts  after  democracy.  Is  the  older  absolute  idealism 
a  menace  to  the  establishment  of  free  institutions,  and  to  the 
peace  of  nations?  The  gravamen  of  the  charge  seems  to  be  this: 
— ^The  idealist,  believing  in  absolute  truth,  and  in  immutable 
principles  of  morality,  and  in  a  spiritual  realm  which  is  not  to  be 
comprehended  under  the  categories  of  the  physical  order,  will 
come  sooner  or  later  to  regard  himself  and  those  of  his  intellectual 
household  as  the  sole  guardians  of  this  truth,  the  only  true  inter- 
preters of  this  moral  law,  and  as,  therefore,  justified  in  employing 
any  means  that  may  seem  expedient  in  making  their  view  prevail. 
Either  the  idealist  views  himself  thus  as  the  Lord's  anointed, 
and  becomes  a  menace  to  mankind,  or  else  he  doesn't  take  his 
idealism  seriously  and  it  becomes  a  milk-and-watery  and  neg- 
ligible doctrine. 


No.  3.]        NOVUM  ITINERARIUM  MENTIS  IN  DEUM.  257 

There  could  hardly  be  a  more  complete  misrepresentation  of 
the  situation.  It  can  only  be  given  the  slightest  semblance  of 
plausibility  by  rehearsing  the  chauvinistic  and  egotistical  utter- 
ances of  a  few  idealists,  whose  chauvinism  was  not  only  not  the 
consequence  of  their  idealism,  but  was  in  fact  in  direct  contradic- 
tion to  it.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  matter  of  plain  history  that 
genuine  intellectual  modesty  among  philosophers,  and  a  broad 
and  tolerant  humanism,  and  an  eagerness  to  learn  from  experi- 
ence, first  made  their  appearance  with  the  dawn  of  absolute  ideal- 
ism. These  are  virtues  she  cannot  be  robbed  of,  even  if  at  times 
some  over-zealous  devotees  have  betrayed  her  cause. 

In  one  of  Plato's  Dialogues,  Socrates  tells  the  story  of  his  own 
intellectual  awakening,  and  it  is  most  instructive  with  regard  to 
the  question  at  issue.  He  learned  one  day  that  a  man  named 
Anaxagoras  had  written  a  book  in  which  he  had  shown  that  mind 
was  the  author  of  all  things.  "Eagerly,"  said  Socrates  in  effect, 
"I  sought  the  book,  but  imagine  my  disappointment  when  I 
found  that,  although  asserting  mind  to  be  the  author,  the  writer 
went  on  to  explain  the  facts  of  experience  without  using  that 
concept  at  all.  If  mind  be  indeed  the  author,  then  everything 
is  as  it  is  because  it  is  best  for  it  so  to  be,  and  the  only  true 
wisdom  would  consist  in  seeing  all  things  in  the  light  of  this  idea 
of  the  good."  He  himself,  however,  was  equally  unable  to  attain 
unto  this  wisdom.  Nevertheless,  he  gets  from  Anaxagoras  an 
inspiration  that  defines  a  program,  the  program  of  absolute 
idealism,  and  sets  a  task  which  ages  will  be  required  to  carry 
out.  For  he  has  a  second  string  to  his  bow;  he  cannot,  of  course, 
take  his  stand  with  absolute  wisdom;  that  would  be  indeed  to 
affect  omniscience.  He  must  begin  in  all  modesty  just  where  he 
finds  himself,  with  what  seems  most  plausible  and  then  proceed 
to  test  this  view  by  clear,  consistent,  and  thorough-going  think- 
ing, brought  ever  to  the  touchstone  of  experience.  In  this 
undertaking  he  finds  that  he  can  successfully  eliminate  error,  and 
substitute  once  for  all  the  more  complete  for  the  less  complete 
vision.  The  modesty  of  this  position  is  obvious.  Of  what 
value  then  to  this  idealist  was  the  conception  of  an  absolute 
reason  so  inaccessible  to  mortal  mind?     It  inspired  and  justified 


258  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

an  absolute  and  self-sacrificing  devotion  to  the  pursuit  of  truth ; 
gave  his  mission,  as  he  viewed  it,  the  sanction  of  a  Divine  com- 
mand; justified  the  belief  that  clear,  straight  thinking  done  by 
any  man  is  done  for  all  men;  that  men  are  brought  together  in 
the  search  for  truth  and  freed  through  its  discovery,  because 
in  mind  they  have  a  truly  common  nature.  Socrates  was  never 
dogmatic.  His  life  is  a  continuous  experimental  test  of  this 
position,  an  attempt,  as  we  might  say,  to  blaze  the  trail  for  the 
itinerarium  mentis  in  Deum.  The  function  of  this  concept  of 
absolute  reason  has  been,  from  Socrates's  day  to  this,  analogous 
to  that  of  the  conservation  of  energy  in  modern  physics,  and  it 
was  as  revolutionary  and  as  fruitful  in  philosophy  as  the  latter 
concept  was  in  physics. 

But  there  is  something  of  the  mystic  in  Socrates,  and  this 
vision  of  completed  truth  toward  which  he  is  striving  is  even  now 
there  before  him,  and  within,  as  the  object  of  his  continual  longing, 
an  object  as  beautiful  and  good  as  it  is  true.  Plato,  or  is  it  still 
Socrates,  under  the  inspiration  of  this  vision,  tries  to  depict  a 
social  order  in  which  this  ideal  shall  be  realized  among  men.  If 
he  makes  the  mistake  which  most  reformers  make  of  trying  to 
make  vice  impossible  through  legislation,  and  of  trying  by  means 
of  institutions  to  bring  about  the  millenium  day  after  tomorrow, 
a  mistake  that  leads  him  into  the  errors  of  premature  socialism, 
he  has  none  the  less  grasped  certain  principles  that  must  still 
serve  as  our  ideal.  The  only  real  state,  the  only  one  worthy  the 
name,  is  one  in  which  every  individual  may  find  the  opportunity 
to  do  that  which  he  is  best  fitted  to  do,  and  in  which  this  service 
shall  always  be  performed  with  an  eye  to  the  welfare  of  the  entire 
community.  The  root  of  evil  in  states  as  in  individuals  is  selfish- 
ness, the  desire  for  self-aggrandizement,  the  desire  to  get  on  at 
the  expense  of  someone  else.  These  are  truths  of  political 
philosophy  which  we  must  still  recognize,  although  nowhere 
have  they  been  brought  to  realization.  And  yet  they  remain, 
as  all  universal  truths  do,  formal.  Whether  any  specific  reform 
will  help  to  bring  about  the  desired  result  we  can  only  tell  by 
trying  But  this  ideal  still  sets  for  us  the  end  with  reference  to 
which  we  pass  judgment  upon  our  several  experiments. 


No.  3-]        NOVUM  ITINERARIUM  MENTIS  IN  DRUM.  259 

With  the  work  of  the  seraphic  doctor,  whose  title  I  have 
borrowed,  I  am  not  especially  concerned.  Despairing  of  the 
state  of  the  world  as  he  found  it,  Bonaventura  sought  salvation 
for  the  individual  by  the  pathway  of  withdrawal,  and  this  gives 
his  work,  for  all  its  beauty,  a  certain  unreality.  But  it  is  worth 
noting  that,  in  spite  of  his  ambitious  undertaking,  this  idealist 
suffers  if  anything  from  an  excess  of  modesty ;  that  moreover  his 
book  is  an  interpretation  of  his  own  experience,  an  account  of 
the  spiritual  gymnastics  whereby  he  had,  as  he  supposed,  himself 
reached  the  peace  that  passed  understanding;  and  that  the  last 
thing  that  could  have  occurred  to  him  would  have  been  to  attempt 
to  force  his  view  on  any  unwilling  mind. 

The  modern  idealist,  and  Professor  Royce  is  my  representative 
modern  idealist,  views,  and  must  view,  his  life  work  as  nothing 
less  than  an  attempt  to  find  and  describe  the  itinerarium  mentis 
in  Deum.  And  yet  no  one,  at  least  in  his  role  as  idealist,  ever 
supposes  that  in  so  doing  he  is  giving  to  the  world  the  only  re- 
liable Baedeker  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  The  very  magnitude 
of  his  aim  insures  his  modesty.  His  philosophy  itself  compels 
him  to  regard  every  serious  student  as  a  collaborator  in  his  under- 
taking, and  to  view  the  task  which  he  has  set  himself  as  one  which 
the  ages  alone  can  carry  to  completion.  Nevertheless,  he  believes 
that  he  does  possess  even  now  a  sure  compass  to  guide  him  in  his 
quest,  certain  fixed  principles  of  thought  and  action,  call  them 
categories  or  imperatives  if  you  will,  which  are  such  as  are 
implied  in  the  very  effort  to  deny  them,  and  are,  therefore,  the 
pre-conditions  of  all  our  interpretations.  He  believes,  more- 
over, and  for  reasons  that  do  not  here  concern  us,  that  this  com- 
plete vision,  which  is  the  goal  of  his  endeavor,  is  no  mere  distant 
ideal  but  rather  an  ever-living  force,  the  life  and  the  light  of  the 
world  today.  He  has  read  his  Socrates  through  the  eyes  of 
Kant,  and  in  the  spirit  of  Bonaventura. 

Amongst  the  many  contributions  which  Professor  Royce  has 
made  to  philosophy,  there  are  three  or  four  that  stand  out  in 
special  relief.  The  earlier  idealists,  intoxicated  by  their  success, 
and  ignoring  the  limitations  imposed  by  their  own  vision,  had 
dealt  rather  cavalierly  with  experience.     Professor  Royce  has 


26o  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

done  excellent  service  in  making  it  plain  that  idealism  not  only- 
permits,  but  compels,  respect  for  the  facts  precisely  as  experience 
reveals  them;  counsels  docility  in  interpreting  nature,  and 
adopts  the  experimental  attitude  toward  all  specific  plans  and 
institutions.  The  absolute  is  not  to  be  found  all  at  once,  and 
the  philosopher,  not  talking  to  the  klepsydra,  as  Plato  would 
say,  but  having  his  eye  on  all  time  and  all  existence,  can  afford 
to  be  patient,  and  will  surely  be  suspicious  of  all  Utopias. 

He  has  also  succeeded  in  cutting  under  the  old  Cartesian 
dualism  of  mind  and  matter,  a  dualism  which  has  haunted  all 
modern  philosophy,  and  is  still  the  fertile  source  of  many  of  our 
misunderstandings.  Mind  is  not  all  here  within,  objects  yonder 
without;  the  unity  of  consciousness  comes  into  being  pari  passu 
with  the  knowledge  of  the  unity  of  experience;  the  interpreter 
is  at  once  on  the  object  as  well  as  on  the  subject  side  of  the 
subject-object  relation.  The  object  that  one  seeks  is  defined  and 
selected  in  the  idea  that  reaches  out  after  it,  and  is  indeed  simply 
its  more  complete  and  individual  embodiment. 

Again,  by  showing  the  universal  presence  of  the  practical  in 
the  theoretical,  he  has  helped  to  bridge  the  Kantian  gulf  between 
these  two  realms,  and  to  establish  the  thoroughgoing  primacy 
of  the  practical, — a  pragmatism  raised  to  the  nth  power. 
.  J  But  I  find  a  new  note  appearing  in  the  Philosophy  of  Loyalty, 
and  prominent  in  all  his  subsequent  writings.  Here  again  our 
idealist  is  simply  interpreting  experience;  his  feet  are  on  the 
ground  of  fact.  But  the  center  of  interest  is  now  our  varied 
human  life  with  all  its  tragedies,  its  hopes,  its  failures,  its  joys, 
as  it  has  been  lived  by  a  very  human  and  lovable  person,  as  good 
as  he  is  wise.  In  these  works  Professor  Royce  has  bridged  the 
gap  which,  in  our  fondness  for  abstractions,  we  are  apt  to  set 
up  between  individuals.  He  has  shown  that  the  isolated  in- 
dividual does  not  exist;  that  we  do  not  take  our  point  of  de- 
parture, as  it  were,  in  the  prison  of  the  inner  life,  and  then  argue 
ourselves  into  the  belief  in  other  minds  on  the  basis  of  analogy, 
finding  the  behavior  of  their  bodies  like  that  of  our  own,  and 
inferring  the  presence  of  a  corresponding  consciousness.  The 
notion  of  a  self-contained  mind  coming  to  believe  in  the  existence 


No.  3.]        NOVUM  ITINERARIUM  MENTIS  IN  DRUM.  261 

of  other  minds  in  such  a  fashion  is  a  pure  abstraction.  We  % 
cannot  even  state  the  argument  from  analogy  without  pre-sup- 
posing  as  its  own  terms  a  consciousness  that  takes  us  beyond  the 
limits  of  our  private  personality.  Our  consciousness  is,  in  truth, 
from  the  first,  social,  and  one  rounds  to  a  separate  mind  only  by 
defining  his  own  interests  and  purposes  within  the  unity  of  the 
mind  of  the  community. 

The  pursuit  of  truth  is  always  a  social  enterprise  where  at 
least  three  minds  are  involved,  one  mind  interpreting  a  second  to 
another,  or  to  other,  minds.  And  the  real  world  we  seek  is  no 
other  than  the  community  of  interpretation  which  can  be  found 
by  no  one  except  the  spirit  of  the  community  dwell  within  him. 
This  idea  of  the  community,  and  of  the  divine  spirit  as  dwelling 
therein,  is  no  mere  abstraction,  no  metaphor,  no  topic  for  mystical 
insight.  Any  highly  organized  community  is  "as  truly  a  human 
being  as  we  are  individually  human,  only  a  community  is  not 
what  we  usually  call  a  human  being;  because  it  has  no  one 
separate  and  internally  well-knit  organism  of  its  own;  and 
because  its  mind,  if  you  attribute  to  it  any  one  mind,  is,  there- 
fore, not  manifested  through  the  expressive  movements  of  such 
a  separate  human  organism."  Nevertheless,  its  mental  life 
possesses  a  psychology  of  its  own  which  can  be  systematically 
studied.  It  is,  moreover,  one  through  the  possession  of  a  common 
fund  of  memories  and  experiences.  "As  empirical  facts,  com-  • 
munities  are  known  to  us  by  their  deeds,  by  their  workings,  by 
their  intelligent  and  coherent  behavior;  just  as  the  minds  of  our 
individual  neighbors  are  known  to  us  through  their  expressions." 
The  difference  between  individual  human  beings  as  we  ordinarily 
regard  them  in  social  intercourse,  and  communities,  is  properly 
characterized  by  describing  them  as  two  grades  or  levels  of  human 
life. 

Thus  our  itinerarium  mentis  in  Deum  has  led  us  to  a  concept 
of  God  as  the  spirit  dwelling  in  the  beloved  community,  a  concept 
which  in  no  wise  resembles  that  spectre  which  the  philosophical 
caricaturist  delights  in  portraying,  the  otiose  absolute  of  the 
schools.  It  is  a  God  who  makes  a  difference  in  the  lives  of  men, 
inspiring  them    to    loyalty,  devotion,  and    self-sacrifice.     And 


262  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [\'0L.  XXV. 

from  start  to  finish,  our  idealism  has  been  in  close  contact  with 
the  facts  of  experience.  If  these  find  their  interpretation  in  this 
idealism,  they  are  not  in  any  sense  transmuted  into  something 
else.  They  remain  with  their  value  fixed  unalterably,  each  in 
its  own  place  in  the  temporal  order,  although  their  meaning,  if 
ever  it  could  be  completely  found,  would  involve  their  exhaustive 
interpretation  in  the  light  of  the  entire  historical  process,  and  in 
the  full  contexture  of  human  intercourse. 

And  if  all  of  our  interpretations  of  experience  are  guided  by  the 
practical  motive,  we  have  here  found  the  supreme  practical 
principle  in  the  call  to  be  loyal  to  the  principle  of  loyalty,  for 
except  through  the  acceptance  of  this  principle,  neither  individual 
nor  community  could  be;  that  is,  to  deny  it  is  to  deny  life  and 
reality. 

I  submit  that  if  this  view  is  true,  the  next  task  for  idealists 
should  be  to  reverse  our  telescopes,  and,  starting  from  this  prac- 
tical imperative,  show  how  the  principles  and  categories,  by 
means  of  which  we  interpret  experience  on  its  various  levels, 
issue  from  it,  and  are  related  to  each  other  with  reference  to  it. 
This  would  be  to  give  a  genuine  deduction  of  the  categories  and 
to  establish  the  primacy  of  the  practical  reason. 

And  have  we  not  in  this  idealism  a  philosophy  which  helps  us 
to  define  our  own  political  aspirations,  and  to  make  articulate 
the  vision  that  underlies  our  efforts  after  democracy?  Most  of 
the  high  sounding  phrases  that  roll  so  glibly  from  the  tongue  of 
the  Fourth  of  July  orator  are  merely  more  or  less  flamboyant 
expressions  of  an  aspiration  common  to  all  civilized  lands  today. 
Every  land  aspires  to  be  a  land  of  the  free,  and  no  one  has  come 
anywhere  near  realizing  this  aspiration.  In  our  efforts  in  this 
direction  we  have  been  particularly  favored  by  our  geographical 
situation,  and  by  our  unsurpassed  physical  resources.  But  most 
of  all  are  we  favored  in  the  varied  assortment  of  our  ancestors. 
We  are  indeed,  as  a  nation,  directly  descended  from  England, 
and  her  institutions,  and  laws,  and  political  beliefs,  have  been 
the  most  potent  influence  in  making  us  what  we  are;  and  the  very 
language  that  we  speak  must  make  her  history,  her  literature, 
and  her  ideals  ever  specially  dear  to  our  hearts.     At  the  same 


No.  3.]        NOVUM  ITINERARIUM  MENTIS  IN  DRUM.  263 

time,  the  collateral  branches  of  our  ancestry  reach  back  into 
almost  every  civilization.  We  are  thus  in  a  position  to  claim 
the  living  past  of  them  all  as  our  own  past  without  being  bound 
by  the  dead  past  of  any  one.  We  are,  therefore,  less  in  bondage 
to  the  past  than  other  nations  not  so  favored ;  less  hampered  by 
the  claims  of  use  and  wont. 

Great  as  are  these  advantages,  they  are  very  far  from  insuring 
the  success  of  our  political  experiment,  and  there  are  many  signs 
of  coming  storm.  We  are  apt  to  speak  and  act  as  if  freedom 
were  a  negative  term,  as  if  it  meant  freedom  from,  instead  of 
freedom  to.  And  so  there  is  a  great  deal  of  mutual  complacency, 
of  easy-going  live  and  let  live,  and  a  spineless  tolerance  of  wrong 
that  does  not  directly  and  obviously  touch  us  as  individuals. 
We  are  an  irreverent  and  a  pleasure  loving  people,  devoted  to 
luxury  and  ease.  Hence  the  universal  desire  for  self-aggrandize- 
ment, the  mad  scramble  for  wealth,  selfishness  on  a  scale  un- 
paralleled in  history,  a  selfishness  that  is  not  overcome  by  oc- 
casional spasms  of  sentimental  kindliness.  Hence,  too,  the 
tendency  to  seek  reform  by  substituting  the  selfishness  of  the 
group,  the  class,  or  the  majority,  for  that  of  the  individual. 
Everyone  thinks  himself  as  good  as  his  neighbor.  There  is  an 
unwillingness  to  use  the  expert,  and  civil  service  reform  makes 
headway  with  painful  slowness.  For  "every  human  unit  must 
count  for  one,  and  no  one  for  more  than  one."  So  runs  the 
shibboleth. 

Does  it  not  all  come  down  to  this,  that  the  concrete  ills  which 
threaten  us,  spring  from  the  fact  that  men  have  lost  their  belief 
in  Truth,  in  eternal  principles  of  morality,  and  in  a  spiritual  order 
that  transcends,  even  if  it  includes,  the  world  of  sense.  If  our 
democracy  is  to  triumph  we  must  find  some  way  of  combining 
service  with  freedom,  the  unity  of  the  community  with  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  individual.  Were  this  consummation  reached, 
we  could  then  say  every  human  unit  counts  for  all,  in  counting 
for  himself,  for  he  only  counts  for  himself  if  the  spirit  of  the 
community  dwell  within  him. 

This  ideal,  like  every  worthy  human  ideal,  calls  for  perfection, 
and,  therefore,  sets  a  task  which  ages  alone  can  bring  to  realiza- 


264  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

tion.  Nevertheless,  it  defines  our  aim,  and  supplies  the  standard 
by  which  we  may  measure  the  value  of  the  means  employed, 
[our  various  experiments  in  righteousness,  individual  and  social] 
and  make  sure  of  our  progress  toward  its  realization.  It  places 
clearly  before  us  the  vision  of  that  state,  at  once  ideal  and  real, 
where  solidarity  and  liberty  have  joined  hands,  and  where  the 
familiar  maxim  'One  for  all  and  all  for  one'  is  more  than  an 
empty  phrase. 

This  is  indeed  not  a  new  social  philosophy,  but  Professor 
Royce  has  given  it  a  novel  interpretation,  and  has  shown  how 
completely  it  controls  the  work  of  theoretical  reason  on  all  its 
levels.  The  ideal  state  which  it  places  before  us  has  many  of 
the  marks  of  socialism,  but  it  is  a  socialism  that  will  be  desirable 
only  when  it  is  no  longer  necessary.  For  any  attempt  to  hasten 
the  realization  of  this  ideal  by  external  means,  by  force,  or  by 
the  mechanism  of  institutions,  would  only  make  sure  its  defeat. 
This  is  a  Kultur  which  can  only  be  spread  by  the  sword  of  the 
spirit. 

Charles  M.  Bake  well. 

Yale  University. 


THE  TELEOLOGY  OF  INORGANIC  NATURE.^ 

"  I  ^HE  study  of  adaptation,  of  which  Lamarck  is  the  great 

-■-  originator,  has  not  yet  won  for  itself  a  secure  scientific 
foundation  nor  led  to  clear  and  unequivocal  interpretations  of 
nature.  Although  the  facts  which  this  study  presents  are  both 
universal  and  important,  biologists  have  neither  agreed  upon 
their  place  in  the  theory  of  evolution  nor  discovered  any  prin- 
ciple by  which  they  may  be  even  unified. 

This  failure  of  our  modern  science  is  not  hard  to  understand, 
and  may  farily  be  attributed,  in  part  at  least,  to  the  lack  of  a 
systematic  study  of  adaptability,  which  at  bottom  is  a  physical 
and  chemical  problem,  uncomplicated  by  the  riddle  of  life. 
For  beneath  all  the  organic  structures  and  functions  are  the 
molecules  and  their  activities.  These  it  is  which  have  been 
moulded  by  the  process  of  evolution,  and  these  no  less  have 
formed  the  environment. 

I  beg  the  reader  to  bear  this  in  mind  and  constantly  to  re- 
member one  simple  question:  What  are  the  physical  and  chemical 
origins  of  diversity  among  inorganic  and  organic  things,  and  how 
shall  the  adaptability  of  matter  and  energy  be  described?  He 
may  then  find  his  way  through  the  difficulties  which  philosophical' 
and  biological  thought  have  accumulated  around  a  problem  that 
in  its  most  fundamental  aspects  belongs  only  to  physical  science. 

The  scientific  examination  of  the  properties  and  activities  of 
the  three  elements  hydrogen,  carbon,  and  oxygen  and  of  their 
compounds  water  and  carbonic  acid,  as  it  was  recently  presented 
in  The  Fitness  of  the  Environment,"^  may  serve  as  an  aid  to  inves- 
tigate the  problem  of  adaptability.  For  it  is  evident  that  di- 
versity in  nature  must  especially  depend  upon  the  existence  and 
availability  of  suitable  structural    materials  in  the  necessary 

1  The  argument  which  is  presented  in  the  following  pages  has  benefited  at 
every  stage  of  its  development  by  Professor  Royce's  criticisms  and  by  successive 
discussions  in  his  Seminary  of  Logic.  I  dedicate  it  to  him  with  pleasure  and 
gratitude. 

2  New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1913. 

265 


266  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

profusion,  variety  and  stability;  on  the  existence  of  conditions 
which  shall  preserve  thestructures;  on  wealth  of  forces  which 
shall  activate  them.  Such  specifications,  like  those  of  an  archi- 
tect or  engineer,  concern  the  properties  of  matter  and  energy 
rather  than  the  laws  of  nature. 

The  properties  of  the  three  elements  meet  most  of  these  speci- 
fications. They  lead  to  the  presence  of  water  and  carbon  dioxide 
in  the  atmosphere,  and  to  the  meteorological  cycle.  This  cycle 
regulates  the  temperature  of  the  globe  more  perfectly  than  it 
could  be  regulated  by  any  other  substance.  It  produces  an 
almost  constant  temperature  in  the  ocean,  as  well  as  constancy 
of  composition  and  of  alkalinity.  It  mobilizes  all  over  the  earth 
great  quantities  of  all  the  elements;  it  deposits  them  in  great 
variety  and  inexhaustible  profusion  in  the  ocean;  it  comminutes 
and  disperses  all  varieties  of  insoluble  minerals,  thereby  diver- 
sifying the  land;  it  causes  water  to  penetrate  and  to  remain  in 
nearly  all  localities.  And  all  of  these  processes  are  more  perfect 
or  more  extensive  than  they  could  be  if  a  large  number  of  the 
different  properties  of  water  were  not  what  they  are.  Thereby 
the  greatest  possible  variety  and  quantity  of  structural  materials 
are  accumulated.  Meanwhile  the  conditions  which  make  for 
durability  of  structures  are  insured. 

Other  similar  results  depend  upon  the  chemical  properties  of 
the  three  elements.  These  properties  lead  to  an  even  greater 
variety  of  chemical  combinations  and  chemical  reactions,  to  an 
unequalled  diversity  of  properties  in  their  products,  and  to  quali- 
tatively and  quantitatively  important  transformations  of  energy. 

Out  of  all  these  substances,  inorganic  and  organic  alike,  the 
properties  of  water  and  of  other  substances  here  in  question 
make  possible  the  construction  of  an  almost  infinite  diversity 
of  physico-chemical  systems.  And,  as  Willard  Gibbs  has 
shown,  the  world  of  physical  science  is  made  up  of  systems 
and  nothing  else.  Natural  systems  may  vary  almost  indefinitely 
in  the  number  and  variety  of  their  phases  and  components,  in 
concentrations,  and  in  configurations.  They  may  be  so  con- 
stituted as  to  produce  the  most  varied  forms  of  activity.  Like 
their  components,  they  may  manifest  the  greatest  variety  of 


No.  3-]         THE   TELEOLOGY  OF  INORGANIC  NATURE.  267 

properties  and  their  forms  include  all  the  possible  forms  of  life 
and  of  the  mineral  kingdom. 

These  and  many  other  things  depend  upon  the  properties  of 
hydrogen,  carbon,  and  oxygen.  They  make  up,  I  cannot  doubt, 
the  most  remarkable  group  of  causes  of  the  teleological  appearance 
of  nature.  Yet  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  they  only  cooperate 
in  the  process  of  evolution,  and  that  many  other  causes  are  just 
as  necessary  to  the  results.  Not  only  are  the  laws  of  nature 
concerned,  but  also  the  characteristics  of  the  solar  system, 
many  special  features  of  the  earth  itself,  and  especially  the  origin 
of  life.  Without  this  mysterious  event  the  process  of  evolution 
must  have  remained  in  a  far  simpler  condition.  But  more  con- 
spicuously than  the  other  factors  in  the  evolutionary  process 
these  fundamental  properties  of  matter  permit  in  a  very  strict 
scientific  sense  freedom  of  development.  This  freedom  is, 
figuratively  speaking,  merely  the  freedom  of  'trial  and  error.' 
It  makes  possible  the  occurrence  of  a  great  variety  of  trials  and 
of  a  large  proportion  of  successes.  I  need  hardly  say  that  we 
arrive  at  the  conception  of  this  kind  of  freedom  only  by  neglecting 
the  causes  which  determine  the  trials — in  this  case  the  general 
laws,  the  rotation  of  the  earth,  the  distance  of  the  sun,  and  many 
others.  But  this  is  equivalent  to  the  remark  that  we  are  in- 
vestigating one  particular  aspect  of  a  complex  problem,  mean- 
while following  the  invariable  method  of  science. 

The  nature  of  the  properties  of  the  three  elements  which  thus 
cooperate  to  bring  these  conditions  to  pass  must  now  be  examined. 
All  properties,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  which  cannot  at  present 
be  recognized  as  bearing  upon  the  general  characteristics  of 
systems,  are  concerned.  Each  of  these  properties  is  almost  or 
quite  unique,  either  because  it  has  a  maximum  or  a  minimum 
value  or  nearly  so,  among  all  known  substances,  or  because  it 
involves  a  unique  relationship  or  an  anomaly.  No  other  element 
or  group  of  elements  possesses  properties  which  on  any  account 
can  be  compared  with  these.  All  are  deficient  at  many  points, 
both  quahtatively  and  quantitatively.  And  since  the  whole 
analysis  is  founded  upon  the  characteristics  of  systems,  and 
therefore  upon  concepts  which  specify  nothing  about  the  proper- 


268  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

ties  of  the  different  kinds  of  matter,  it  is  unnecessary  to  examine 
the  possibility  of  the  existence  of  other  groups  of  properties 
otherwise  unique. 

Thus  we  reach  the  conclusion  that  the  properties  of  hydrogen, 
carbon,  and  oxygen  make  up  a  unique  ensemble  of  properties, 
each  one  of  which  is  itself  unique.  This  ensemble  of  properties 
is  of  the  highest  importance  in  the  evolutionary  process,  for  it  is 
that  which  makes  diversity  possible;  and  diversity,  as  Spencer 
declares,  is  radically  necessary  to  evolution.  In  short,  there  is 
here  involved  an  order  in  the  properties  of  the  elements. 

This  new  order  is,  so  to  speak,  hidden,  when  one  considers  the 
properties  of  matter  abstractly  and  statically.  It  becomes  evi- 
dent only  when  time  is  taken  into  consideration.  It  has  a  dy- 
namical significance,  and  relates  to  evolution.  It  is  associated 
with  the  periodic  system  of  the  elements  in  somewhat  the  same 
way  that  the  functional  order  is  related  to  the  structural  order  in 
biology.  Hence  it  is  not  independent  of  the  other  order,  but 
may  be  said  to  lie  masked  within  it. 

This  is  no  novel  experience,  that  the  consideration  of  phe- 
nomena in  time  should  lead  to  new  points  of  view.  From  Gali- 
leo's inclined  plane  and  pendulum  to  the  times  of  Darwin  and 
modern  physical  chemistry,  the  progress  of  dynamics  has  steadily 
modified  our  outlook  on  nature.  In  truth,  it  might  almost  have 
been  said  a  priori  that  a  new  order  must  be  revealed  by  a  study 
of  the  properties  of  matter  in  relation  to  evolution. 

This  order  may  be  described  abstractly  as  follows:  The  proper- 
ties of  matter  are  not  evenly  distributed  among  the  elements, 
nor  in  such  manner  as  can  be  explained  by  the  laws  of  chance, 
nor  are  they  altogether  distributed  in  the  manner  which  the 
periodic  system  describes.  If  the  extremes  be  considered,  all  the 
physical  and  chemical  properties  are  distributed  with  the  very 
greatest  unevenness,  so  that  the  extremes  are  concentrated  upon  a 
few  elements,  notably  hydrogen,  oxygen,  and  carbon.  As  a 
result  of  this  fact  there  arise  certain  peculiarities  of  the  cosmic 
process  which  could  not  otherwise  occur. 

The  characteristics  which  make  up  this  unique  ensemble 
include  the  greater  number  of  characteristics,  and  especially  the 


No.  3.]         THE   TELEOLOGY  OF  INORGANIC  NATURE.  269 

most  important  and  the  most  conspicuous  physical  and  chemical 
properties.  This  order  has  for  cosmic  and  organic  evolution 
extremely  important  results — maximum  stability  of  physico- 
chemical  conditions  and  maximum  complexity  in  the  physico- 
chemical  make-up  of  the  surface  of  our  planet;  further,  the  pos- 
sibility of  maximum  number,  variety,  complexity,  durability 
and  activity  of  physico-chemical  systems  in  such  an  environment. 

The  unique  ensemble  of  properties  of  water,  carbonic  acid  and 
the  three  elements  constitutes  among  the  properties  of  matter 
the  fittest  ensemble  of  characteristics  for  durable  mechanism. 
No  other  environment,  that  is  to  say  no  environment  other  than 
the  surface  of  a  planet  upon  which  water  and  carbonic  acid  are 
the  primary  constituents,  could  so  highly  favor  the  widest  range 
of  durability  and  activity  in  the  widest  range  of  material  systems 
— in  systems  varying  with  respect  to  phases,  to  components,  and 
to  concentrations.  This  environment  is  indeed  the  fittest.  It 
has  a  claim  to  the  use  of  the  superlative  based  upon  quantitative 
measurement  and  exhaustive  treatment,  which  is  altogether 
lacking  in  the  case  of  the  fitness  of  the  organism.  For  the 
organism,  so  we  fondly  hope,  is  ever  becoming  more  fit,  and  the 
law  of  evolution  is  the  survival  of  the  fitter. 

Yet  it  is  only  for  mechanism  in  general,  and  not  for  any  special 
form  of  mechanism,  whether  life  as  we  know  it,  or  a  steam  engine, 
that  this  environment  is  fittest.  The  ocean,  for  example,  fits 
mechanism  in  general;  and,  if  you  will,  it  fits  the  whale  and  the 
plankton  diatom,  though  not  man  or  a  butterfly.  But,  of  course, 
as  everybody  has  known  since  1859,  it  is  really  the  whale  and  the 
diatom  which  fit  the  ocean.  And  this  leads  to  a  biological  con- 
clusion. 

Just  because  life  must  manifest  itself  in  and  through  mechan- 
ism, just  because,  being  in  this  world,  it  must  inhabit  a  more  or 
less  durable,  more  or  less  active  physico-chemical  system  of  more 
or  less  complexity  in  its  phases,  components  and  concentrations, 
it  is  conditioned.  The  inorganic,  such  as  it  is,  imposes  certain 
conditions  upon  the  organic.  Accordingly,  we  may  say  that  the 
special  characteristics  of  the  inorganic  are  the  fittest  for  those 
general  characteristics  of  the  organic  which  the  general  character- 


270  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

istics  of  the  inorganic  impose  upon  the  organic.  This  is  the 
one  side  of  reciprocal  biological  fitness.  The  other  side  may  be 
similarly  stated:  Through  adaptation  the  special  characteristics 
of  the  organic  come  to  fit  the  special  characteristics  of  a  particular 
environment,  to  fit,  not  any  planet,  but  a  little  corner  of  the  earth. 

This  is  a  most  imperfect  characterization  of  the  dynamic  order 
in  the  properties  of  the  elements,  for  it  involves  only  three  among 
more  than  eighty  substances.  More  serious,  perhaps,  is  the  dif- 
ficulty of  reducing  the  statement  to  a  methodical  form.  It  will 
be  well,  therefore,  to  take  it  as  it  stands.  But  the  ensemble  of 
characteristics  of  the  three  elements  cannot  therefore  be  dis- 
missed. We  have  to  note  that  the  connection  of  the  properties 
of  these  elements  is  not  to  be  disregarded  on  the  ground  that  it  is 
an  affair  of  the  reflective  judgment,  for  that  consideration  would 
also  lead  to  the  rejection  of  the  connection  of  properties  revealed 
in  the  periodic  classification  of  the  elements.  Nor  can  we  look 
upon  it  as  in  any  sense  the  work  of  chance. 

"There  is,  in  fact,  exceedingly  little  ground  for  hope  that  any 
single  explanation  of  these  coincidences  can  arise  from  current 
hypotheses  and  laws.  But  if  to  the  coincidence  of  the  unique 
properties  of  water  we  add  that  of  the  chemical  properties  of  the 
three  elements,  a  problem  results  under  which  the  science  of  today 
must  surely  break  down.  If  these  taken  as  a  whole  are  ever  to 
be  understood,  it  will  be  in  the  future,  when  research  has  pene- 
trated far  deeper  into  the  riddle  of  the  properties  of  matter. 
Nevertheless  an  explanation  cognate  with  known  laws  is  con- 
ceivable, and  in  the  light  of  experience  it  would  be  folly  to  think 
it  impossible  or  even  improbable."^ 

Yet  such  an  explanation,  once  attained,  could  little  avail.  For 
a  further  and  more  difficult  problem  remains.  How  does  it  come 
about  that  each  and  all  of  these  many  unique  properties  should 
be  favorable  to  the  process  of  evolution?  Existing  knowledge 
provides  no  clue  to  an  answer  of  this  question.  For  there  seems 
to  be  here  no  possibility  of  any  interaction  like  that  involved  in  the 
production  of  dynamic  equilibrium  or  in  natural  selection.  And 
yet  the  connection  between  the  properties  of  the  three  elements, 

*  The  Fitness  of  the  Environment,  pp.  277,  278. 


No.  3.]         THE   TELEOLOGY  OF  INORGANIC  NATURE.  27 1 

almost  infinitely  improbable  as  the  result  of  chance,  can  be  re- 
garded, is  in  truth  only  fully  intelligible  even  when  mechanistic- 
ally explained,  as  a  preparation  for  the  evolutionary  process. 
This  ensemble  is  the  condition  of  the  production  of  many  systems 
from  few,  and  any  other  sensibly  different  distribution  of  the 
properties  among  the  elements,  almost  infinitely  numerous 
though  such  conceivable  distributions  may  be,  would  very  greatly 
restrict  the  possibilities  of  the  multiplication  of  systems.  In  other 
words,  the  possibility  is  negligible  that  conditions  equally  favor- 
able to  the  production  of  diversity  in  the  course  of  evolution 
should  arise  without  cause.  But  we  are  ignorant  of  the  existence 
of  any  cause  except  the  mind  which  can  thus  produce  results  that 
are  fully  intelligible  only  in  their  relation  to  later  events.  Never- 
theless we  can  on  no  account,  unless  we  are  to  abandon  that 
principle  of  probability  which  is  the  basis  of  every  scientific 
induction,  deny  this  connection  between  the  properties  of  matter 
and  the  diversity  of  evolution.  For  the  connection  is  fully 
obvious  and  the  result  is  reached  by  a  scientific  demonstration. 
This  conclusion  is  so  important  that  I  will  try  to  state  the 
argument  in  its  simplest  form.  The  process  of  evolution  consists 
in  the  increase  of  diversity  of  systems  and  their  activities,  in  the 
multiplication  of  physical  occurrences,  or  briefly  in  the  production 
of  much  from  little.  Other  things  being  equal,  there  is  maximum 
freedom  for  such  evolution  on  account  of  a  certain  unique  ar- 
rangement of  unique  properties  of  matter.  A  change  in  any 
one  of  these  properties  would  greatly  diminish  the  freedom. 
The  chance  that  this  unique  ensemble  of  properties  should  occur 
by  accident  is  almost  infinitely  small.  The  chance  that  each  of 
the  unit  properties  of  this  arrangement  by  itself  and  in  cooper- 
ation with  the  others  should  accidentally  contribute  to  this 
freedom  a  maximum  increment  is  also  almost  infinitely  small. 
Therefore  there  is  a  causal  connection  between  the  properties  of 
the  elements  and  the  freedom  of  evolution.  But  the  properties 
of  the  universal  elements  antedate  or  are  logically  prior  to  those 
restricted  aspects  of  evolution  with  which  we  are  concerned. 
Hence  we  are  obliged  to  regard  the  properties  as  in  some  intel- 
ligible sense  a  preparation  for  the  process  of  planetary  evolution. 


272  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

For  we  cannot  imagine  an  interaction  between  the  properties  of 
hydrogen,  carbon  and  oxygen  and  any  process  of  planetary 
evolution  or  any  similar  process  by  which  the  properties  of  the 
elements  should  have  been  modified  throughout  the  universe. 
Therefore  the  properties  of  the  elements  must  for  the  present 
be  regarded  as  possessing  a  teleological  character. 

It  will  perhaps  be  objected  to  this  argument  that  the  cause  of 
the  peculiar  properties  of  the  three  elements  is  conceivably  a 
simple  one,  such  as  the  properties  of  the  electron.  This  is 
perfectly  true  but  quite  beside  the  point.  For,  whether  simple 
or  complex  in  origin,  the  teleological  connection — the  logical 
relation  of  the  properties  of  the  three  elements  to  the  character- 
istics of  systems — is  complex.  This  complex  connection  is 
almost  infinitely  improbable  as  a  chance  occurrence.  But  the 
properties  of  electrons  do  not  produce  logical  connections  of  this 
kind  any  more  than  they  produce  the  logical  connections  of  the 
multiplication  table.  Only  adaptation  is  known  to  produce  such 
results. 

This  is  the  one  positive  scientific  conclusion  which  I  have  to 
contribute  to  the  teleological  problem.  It  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  it  concerns  but  a  single  characteristic  of  the  teleo- 
logical appearance  of  nature.  The  question  of  the  interplay  of 
nature's  laws  is  left  just  where  we  found  it.  And  the  accidental 
advantages  which  our  earth  possesses  when  compared  with  the 
other  planets  of  the  solar  system,  or  with  planets  as  they  may  be 
abstractly  conceived  are  not  even  touched  upon.  Yet  some  of 
the  very  most  remarkable  conditions  which  lead  to  the  diversi- 
fication of  the  products  of  evolution  are  here  involved.  We 
have,  however,  to  bear  in  mind  certain  of  the  general  character- 
istics of  all  planets  as  they  tend  to  appear  through  the  influence 
of  the  properties  of  matter.  And  if  the  analysis  has  not  been 
carried  to  a  further  stage,  it  is  because  we  can  see  the  possibility 
of  almost  infinite  diversity  in  the  properties  of  particular  planets, 
while  the  universe  seems  to  possess  but  a  single  system  of  chemical 
elements. 

The  result  of  our  analysis  is  therefore  nothing  but  an  example 
or  specimen  of  the  scientific  analysis  of  the  order  of  nature.     In 


No.  3-]         THE   TELEOLOGY  OF  INORGANIC  NATURE.  273 

that  it  Is  scientific  it  possesses  two  characteristics  which  are 
important  to  note.  First  it  leaves  the  chain  of  mechanical  deter- 
mination completely  unmodified.  We  need  take  no  account  what- 
ever of  such  logical  relations  of  things,  just  as  we  may  disregard 
the  logical  relations  of  the  periodic  system,  in  studying  any  of  the 
phenomena  or  groups  of  phenomena  in  nature.  Secondly,  like 
all  scientific  conclusions,  its  validity  depends  upon  the  principle 
of  probability.^ 

The  scientific  value  of  this  induction  of  the  dynamic  order  in 
the  properties  of  the  elements  must  depend  upon  its  utility  as  a 
means  to  the  comprehension  of  diversity  and  stability  in  the 
products  of  evolution.  But  there  is  a  further  philosophical 
aspect  of  the  conclusion  which  cannot  be  altogether  disregarded. 
In  arriving  at  the  scientific  conclusion  we  have  reached  a 
position  from  which  one  aspect  of  the  teleological  configuration 
of  nature  can  be  clearly  perceived  and  closely  scrutinized.  It 
is  now  evident  that  the  diversity  of  the  world  largely  depends 
upon  a  specific  group  of  characteristics  of  the  elements. 

In  order  to  describe  the  course  of  all  natural  phenomena  as  they 
have  actually  occurred,  it  is,  however,  quite  unnecessary  to  under- 
stand or  to  take  account  of  the  peculiar  relations  which  we  have 
discovered  to  exist  between  these  properties  and  the  characteris- 
tics of  systems.  But,  indeed,  if  we  are  merely  to  describe  phe- 
nomena as  they  occur,  it  is  not  even  necessary  to  take  account 
of  the  law  of  gravitation.  When,  however,  the  more  interesting 
task  of  explaining,  or  if  this  term  be  unacceptable,  of  generalizing 
the  description,  is  seriously  taken  up,  the  employment  of  laws, 
which  depend  upon  our  perceptions  or  judgments  of  the  relations 
between  things,  becomes  necessary.  The  development  of  modern 
science  has  provided  us  with  a  considerable  number  of  such  laws, 
of  which  the  most  conspicuous  besides  Newton's  law  are  the  law 
of  the  conservation  of  mass,  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy 
and  the  law  of  the  degradation  of  energy.  Such  laws  enable  us 
to  imagine  the  conditions  under  which  all  phenomena  may  be 
assumed  to  take  place,  in  this  manner  to  classify  events  which  are 

1  Cf .  Newton's  fourth  rule  of  reasoning  in  philosophy,  in  which  the  element  of 
probability  in  every  induction  is  clearly  suggested. 


274  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

widely  separated  in  time  and  space,  and  thus  gradually  to  ap- 
proach more  nearly  to  a  conception  of  the  world  in  which  the 
infinite  diversity  of  phenomena  gives  place  to  a  very  large  number 
of  possible  phenomena.  In  establishing  such  a  classification 
Newton's  law  and  certain  others  have  been  of  inestimable  service; 
not  so  the  most  general  laws  like  those  of  conserv^ation  and  the 
second  law  of  thermodynamics.  These  are  too  general  to  be 
always  of  value  for  this  purpose,  in  that  they  are  conditions  of 
all  phenomena.  They  have  therefore  often  been  of  little  use  in 
this  respect,  except  through  their  influence  to  make  scientific 
thought  more  exact  and  more  successfully  analytical. 

Another  function  of  scientific  laws  has  been  to  bring  about  the 
synthesis  of  the  several  sciences.  With  their  help  these  have 
become  highly  organized  bodies  of  knowledge  which  sometimes 
present  purely  mathematical  exhaustiveness,  rigorousness,  and 
elegance  in  the  treatment  of  problems  and  in  some  instances 
successful  prediction  of  unknown  facts.  This  is  the  role  for 
which  the  general  laws  are  best  fitted.  A  small  number  of  them 
often  suffice  for  the  systematic  development  of  large  departments 
of  science  and  for  the  deduction  of  many  secondary  principles 
and  large  numbers  of  facts.  Newton's  Principia  is  the  classical 
example  of  this  process,  but  it  is  now  generally  admitted  that 
for  this  purpose  the  laws  of  thermodynamics  surpass  even  the 
fundamental  postulates  of  Newton's  mathematical  analysis. 

In  the  course  of  such  developments  it  has  been  found  necessary 
to  employ  other  concepts  than  laws.  The  phenomena  of  nature 
are  never  simple,  and  rarely  approach  near  enough  to  simplicity 
to  serve  as  crucial  experiments.  The  case  of  the  solar  system, 
as  recognized  and  employed  by  Newton,  is  the  one  great  example 
of  a  sufficiently  isolated  natural  experiment.  But  even  in  the 
laboratory  the  man  of  science  must  always  content  himself  with 
an  imperfect  elimination  of  disturbing  factors.  As  a  result  of 
this  difficulty  the  purely  abstract  ideas  of  line,  mass,  system,  and 
many  others  have  found  their  place  in  scientific  thought.  Thus 
all  abstract  scientific  thought  moves  in  an  ideal  world  which 
never  corresponds  exactly  with  reality,  but  which  may  be  made 
to  approximate  to  reality  within  any  desired  limits.     Such  are 


No.  3-]         THE   TELEOLOGY  OF  INORGANIC  NATURE.  275 

the  more  important  functions  of  the  abstract  principles  and 
concepts  of  science  which  here  concern  us. 

It  has  been  indicated  above  how  the  concept  of  system  may  be 
employed  in  the  methodical  description  of  the  general  char- 
acteristics of  evolution.  And  the  one  existing  systematic  attempt 
to  give  a  full  description  of  this  process,  as  it  appears  in  Spencer's 
Synthetic  Philosophy,  is  guided  by  a  vague  and  inaccurate  antici- 
pation of  this  idea.  Moreover,  we  can  now  see  that  a  recognition 
of  the  peculiarities  of  hydrogen,  carbon,  and  oxygen  is  a  necessary 
further  means  to  the  explanation  of  the  process.  For  these 
pecuHarities  are  a  significant  condition  of  every  stage,  and  without 
them  the  most  general  characteristics  of  nature  could  never  have 
arisen.  This  generalization  is  therefore  a  typical  instrument  of 
scientific  thought,  in  that  it  facilitates  abstract  discriminations 
and  descriptions,  and  helps  to  make  possible  a  generalized  con- 
ception of  the  process  as  a  whole. 

The  consideration  of  such  well-known  principles  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  science  would  be  quite  out  of  place  were  it  not  for  the 
teleological  implications  of  the  conclusion.  The  peculiarities 
of  the  elements  appear  to  be  original  characteristics  of  the  uni- 
verse, or  if  not  they  at  least  appear  to  arise  invariably  and  uni- 
versally when  conditions  make  possible  the  stability  of  the  atoms. 
Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  the  properties  of  hydrogen, 
carbon,  and  oxygen  are  changeless  throughout  time  and  space. 
It  is  conceivable  that  the  atoms  may  be  formed  and  that  they 
may  decay.  But  while  they  exist  they  are  uniform,  or  at  least 
they  possess  perfect  statistical  uniformity  which  leads  to  absolute 
constancy  of  all  their  sensible  characteristics,  that  is  to  say  of  all 
the  properties  with  which  we  are  concerned.  And  yet  this 
original  characteristic  of  things  is  the  principle  cause  of  diversity 
in  that  stage  of  the  evolutionary  process  which  is  fully  within 
the  grasp  of  natural  science. 

But  it  may  be  objected  that  in  the  strict  scientific  sense  this  is 
not  a  relation  of  cause  and  effect  at  all.  For  we  are  concerned 
with  an  indefinite  number  of  chains  of  causation  in  each  of  which 
the  preceding  condition  is  at  every  point  the  cause  of  the  succeed- 
ing condition. 


276  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Like  Newton's  law,  or  any  other  principle  of  science,  great  or 
small,  the  peculiarities  of  the  three  elements  are,  of  course,  the 
cause  of  nothing.  They  are  merely  the  conditions  under  which 
the  phenomena  reveal  themselves.  And  the  world  is  now  what 
it  is  because  it  was  something  else  just  a  moment  ago.  There 
can  be  no  objection  to  this  position.  But  if  we  are  therefore 
required  to  close  our  inquiry  at  this  stage,  the  reply  must  be 
made  that  we  shall  then  be  obliged  to  exclude  all  the  laws  of 
science  from  our  philosophy. 

And  so  we  may  return  to  the  conclusion  that  the  prin- 
cipal peculiarity  of  the  universe  which  makes  diversity  of  evo- 
lution possible  is  original  and  anterior  to  all  instances  of  the  pro- 
cesses which  it  conditions.  And  we  may  recall  the  fact  that  this 
peculiarity  consists  of  a  group  of  characteristics  such  that  they 
cannot  be  regarded  as  accidental.  Finally,  it  will  be  remembered 
that  the  relations  of  this  group  of  properties  to  the  characteristics 
of  systems  are  also  such  that  they  cannot  be  thought  accidental. 
I  believe  that  these  statements  are  scientific  facts.  If  this  be 
so,  we  have  arrived  at  the  solution  for  a  special  case  of  Aristotle's 
problem  of  "the  character  of  the  material  nature  whose  necessary 
results  have  been  made  available  by  rational  nature  for  a  final 
cause."^ 


Of  course,  objections  will  at  once  arise  to  the  terms  '  rational 
nature  '  and  '  final  cause.'  In  reply  I  have  little  to  say,  for  I  believe 
that  Aristotle  has  justified  his  use,  in  his  own  day,  of  these 
terms.  In  the  first  place,  I  conceive thattheterm '  rational  nature ' 
of  the  fourth  century  may  be  translated  into  the  modern  term 
*  laws  of  nature.'  For  these  laws  are  exclusively  rational ;  they  are 
the  product  of  the  human  reason,  and  are  not  conceived  by  science 
to  have  objective  existence  in  nature.  This  is  also  clearly  true 
of  the  relation  between  the  properties  of  the  elements  and  the 
course  of  evolution.  Secondly,  as  we  have  seen  above,  all 
phenomena  are  phenomena  of  systems.  Hence  the  operations 
of  a  final  cause,  if  such  there  be,  can  only  occur  through  the 
evolution  of  systems.  And  therefore  the  greatest  possible 
freedom  for  the  evolution  of  systems  involves  the  greatest  possible 
freedom  for  the  operation  of  a  final  cause. 

*  De  parlibus  animalium,  663'',  20. 


No.  3-]         THE   TELEOLOGY  OF  INORGANIC  NATURE.  277 

The  above  statement  may  now  be  modified  to  the  following 
effect:  We  possess  a  solution  for  a  special  case  of  the  problem  of 
the  characteristics  of  the  material  nature  whose  necessary  results 
have  been  made  available  by  the  laws  of  nature  for  any  hypo- 
thetical final  cause.  Thus  the  whole  problem  of  the  teleological 
significance  of  our  scientific  conclusions  reduces  to  the  simple  but 
infinitely  difficult  question  whether  a  final  cause  is  to  be  postu- 
lated. 

Here  we  are  once  more  confronted  by  the  fact  that  no  mechan- 
ical cause  of  the  properties  of  the  elements  except  an  antecedent 
process  is  conceivable.  And  since  the  elements  are  uniform 
throughout  space,  there  cannot  have  been,  in  the  proper  sense, 
any  contingency  about  the  operation  of  this  cause.  At  the  most, 
contingency  can  have  only  produced  an  irregular  distribution  of 
the  different  elements  in  different  stars.  But  according  to  the 
orthodox  scientific  view  there  is  no  room  for  contingency  in  such 
discussions.  Accordingly,  the  properties  of  the  elements  are 
to  be  regarded  as  fully  determined  and  perfectly  changeless  in 
time.  This  we  may  take  as  a  postulate.  But  the  abstract 
characteristics  of  systems  are  no  less  fully  determined  and  ab- 
solutely changeless  in  time.     This  is  a  second  postulate. 

Finally  the  relation  between  the  numerous  properties  of  hydro- 
gen, carbon,  and  oxygen,  severally  and  in  cooperation,  and  the 
necessary  conditions  of  existence  of  systems  in  respect  of  number, 
diversity  and  durability,  as  these  conditions  are  defined  by  the 
exact  analysis  of  Willard  Gibbs,  is  certainly  not  due  to  chance. 
In  other  words,  the  statistical  probability  that  this  connection 
has  a  cause,  is  greater  than  the  statistical  probability  which  we 
can  ever  demand  or  usually  realize  in  the  establishment  of  our 
laws  of  science.  It  should  be  remembered  that  we  are  here 
dealing  with  three  elements  among  more  than  eighty,  and  with 
more  than  twenty  properties;  further  that  it  is  not  merely  a 
question  of  the  coincidence  of  the  unique  properties  among  the 
elements,  but  especially  of  the  relation  of  these  properties  to 
systems.  The  uniqueness  of  the  properties  is  significant  only 
because  it  proves  their  unique  fitness  for  systems.  Finally,  if  it 
should  be  proved  that  the  properties  are  the  result  of  one  simple 


278  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

cause,  the  question  would  become:  What  is  the  probability  that 
from  a  single  cause  this  group  of  unique  fitnesses  for  a  subsequent 
process  should  arise?  This  problem  is  mathematically  identical 
with  the  earlier  one. 

No  mechanical  cause  of  the  properties  of  the  elements  is,  how- 
ever, conceivable  which  should  be  mechanically  dependent  upon 
the  characteristics  of  systems.  For  no  mechanical  cause  what- 
ever is  conceivable  of  those  original  conditions,  whatever  they 
may  be,  which  unequivocally  determine  the  changeless  properties 
of  the  elements  and  the  general  characteristics  of  systems  alike. 
We  are  therefore  led  to  the  hypothesis  that  the  properties  of  the 
three  elements  are  somehow  a  preparation  for  the  evolutionary 
process.  Indeed  this  is  the  only  explanation  of  the  connection 
which  is  at  present  imaginable. 

Such  an  hypothesis  will  have  to  be  judged  on  its  merits.  Ad- 
mitting the  scientific  facts,  it  possesses,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  two 
defects.  In  the  first  place,  the  term  preparation  is  scientifically 
unintelligible;  secondly,  this  hypothesis  is  not  only  novel  but  it 
is  different  in  kind  from  all  other  scientific  hypotheses.  For 
no  other  scientific  hypothesis  involves  preparations  other  than 
those  which  originate  in  the  animal  mind.  In  short,  we  are 
face  to  face  with  the  problem  of  design.  Concerning  the  philo- 
sophical aspects  of  this  question  I  have  nothing  new  to  say.  It 
seems  to  me  to  be  clearly  established  in  the  history  of  thought 
that  when  the  problem  arises  the  only  safety  consists  in  taking 
refuge  in  the  vaguest  possible  term  which  can  be  employed. 
That  term  is  teleology.  I  shall  therefore  modify  the  above  state- 
ment and  say  that  the  connection  between  the  properties  of  the 
three  elements  and  the  evolutionary  process  is  teleological  and 
non-mechanical . 

Here  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  biological  organization  consists 
in  a  teleological  and  non-mechanical  relationship  between  me- 
chanical things  and  processes.  In  both  cases  the  relationship  is 
rational  and  non-mechanical,  the  things  related  mechanical  and 
non-rational.  Or,  in  other  words,  the  relation  is  an  affair  of  the 
reflective  judgment,  the  things  related  of  the  determinant  judg- 
ment.    It  is  the  failure  to  understand  this  distinction  which  is 


No.  3-]         THE   TELEOLOGY  OF  INORGANIC  NATURE.  279 

at  the  bottom  of  most  misunderstandings  concerning  teleological 
problems  in  biology.  The  understanding  may  be  facilitated  by 
noting  that  the  periodic  classification  of  the  elements  is  also  a 
rational  and  non-mechanical  relationship. 

If  it  still  be  asked  whether  this  conclusion  has  any  intelligible 
meaning,  the  answer  must  be  affirmative.  For  the  concept  of 
organization  is  now  in  general  scientific  use.  How  then  should  it 
be  thought  strange  to  find  in  the  inorganic  world  something 
slightly  analogous  to  that  which  is  clearly  recognized  in  the  or- 
ganic. Indeed,  no  idea  is  older  or  more  common  than  a  belief 
or  suspicion  that  somehow  nature  itself  is  a  great  imperfect 
organism.  There  is  nothing  to  commend  such  a  view  to  natural 
science,  but  it  may  well  have  a  foundation  in  undefined  realities 
vaguely  perceived . 

We  thus  reach  the  conclusion  that  in  one  of  its  most  important 
aspects  the  teleological  appearance  of  nature  depends  upon  an 
unquestionable  relationship  between  the  original  characteristics 
of  the  universe  which,  because  it  is  merely  a  relationship  and  in 
no  sense  a  mechanical  connection,  because  it  is  unmodified  by 
the  evolutionary  process  and  changeless  in  time,  is  to  be  described 
as  teleological.  The  reason  why  it  must  be  described  as  teleo- 
logical is  that  there  is  no  other  way  to  describe  it.  It  is  teleo- 
logical just  as  the  periodic  system  is  periodic.  In  other  words^ 
the  appearance  of  harmonious  unity  in  nature,  which  no  man 
can  escape,  depends  upon  a  genuine  harmonious  unity  which  is 
proved  to  exist  among  certain  of  the  abstract  characteristics  of 
the  universe.  As  a  qualification  of  such  abstract  characteristics, 
contingency,  the  one  concept  opposed  to  harmonious  unity  of 
nature,  finds  no  place.  Thus  the  teleological  character  of  nature 
is  recognized  through  a  connection,  conceivable  only  as  teleo- 
logical, among  the  abstract  characteristics  of  nature. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  there  is  here  involved  but  a 
single  instance  of  a  teleological  connection  between  the  laws  of 
nature.  And  though  we  can  vaguely  distinguish  other  teleo- 
logical aspects  of  the  principles  of  science,  as  in  the  tendency 
toward  dynamic  equilibrium,  there  seems  to  be  at  present  no 
possibility  of  investigating  the  problem  in  a  more  general  manner. 


28o  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Yet  this  single  result  is  sufficient  greatly  to  strengthen  a  philo- 
sophical position  at  which  many  thoughtful  men  have  arrived 
from  the  most  varied  experiences  and  diverse  lines  of  thought. 
Charles  Darwin  has  stated  it  as  follows: 

"Another  source  of  conviction  of  the  existence  of  God,  con- 
nected with  the  reason,  and  not  with  the  feelings,  impresses  me 
as  having  much  more  weight.  This  follows  from  the  extreme 
difficulty,  or  rather  impossibility,  of  concefving  the  immense  and 
wonderful  universe,  including  man  with  his  capacity  of  looking 
far  backwards  and  far  into  futurity,  as  the  result  of  blind  chance 
or  necessity.  When  thus  reflecting  I  feel  compelled  to  look  to  a 
First  Cause  having  an  intelligent  mind  in  some  degree  analogous 
to  that  of  man;  and  I  deserve  to  be  called  a  Theist.  This  con- 
clusion was  strong  in  my  mind  about  the  time,  as  far  as  I  can 
remember,  when  I  wrote '  The  Origin  of  Species,'  and  it  is  since  that 
time  that  it  has  very  gradually,  with  many  fluctuations,  become 
weaker.  But  then  arises  the  doubt,  can  the  mind  of  man,  which 
has,  as  I  fully  believe,  been  developed  from  a  mind  as  low  as  that 
possessed  by  the  lowest  animals,  be  trusted  when  it  draws  such 
general  conclusions?" 

"I  cannot  pretend  to  throw  the  least  light  upon  such  abstruse 
problems.  The  mystery  of  the  beginnings  of  all  things  is  in- 
soluble by  us;  and  I  for  one  must  be  content  to  remain  an 
Agnostic."^ 

Evidently  Darwin's  unmethodical  considerations  of  the  problem 
have  developed  from  an  original  theological  view  to  a  vague  the- 
ism, and  from  that  to  a  hesitating  denial  of  the  possibility  that 
any  intelligible  explanation  of  the  teleology  of  nature  can  be 
found.  But  from  teleology  itself  he  cannot  escape.  Thus  his 
position  is  identical  with  that  of  Hume  and  a  long  line  of  other 
thinkers.  The  tormenting  riddle,  eternal  and  inexplicable,  is 
the  existence,  not  of  the  universe,  but  of  nature. 

The  whole  history  of  thought  does  but  prove  the  justice  of  this 
conclusion.  We  may  progressively  lay  bare  the  order  of  nature 
and  define  it  with  the  aid  of  the  exact  sciences;  thus  we  may 
recognize  it  for  what  it  is  and  see  that  it  is  teleological.     But 

1  Life  and  Letters  of  C.  Darwin,  London,  1888,  Vol.  I.  pp.  312-313. 


No.  3-]         THE   TELEOLOGY  OF  INORGANIC  NATURE.  28 1 

we  shall  never  find  the  explanation  of  the  riddle.  Upon  this 
subject  clear  ideas  and  close  reasoning  are  no  longer  possible, 
for  thought  has  arrived  at  one  of  its  natural  frontiers.  Nothing 
more  remains  but  to  admit  that  the  riddle  surpasses  us  and  to 
conclude  that  the  contrast  of  mechanism  with  teleology  is  the 
very  foundation  of  the  order  of  nature,  which  must  ever  be  re- 
garded from  two  complementary  points  of  view,  as  a  vast 
assemblage  of  changing  systems  and  as  an  harmonious  unity  of 
changeless  laws  and  qualities.^ 

Lawrence  J.  Henderson. 

Harvard  University. 
1  Cf.  Bosanquet,  The  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value,  London,  1912,  p.  155. 


THE    FOUNDATION    IN    ROYCE'S    PHILOSOPHY    FOR 
CHRISTIAN  THEISM.i 

THEISM  is  a  philosophy,  a  system  of  thought  about  the 
ultimate  nature  of  reality.  Christianity  is  a  religion,  the 
relation  of  person  to  person — in  Royce's  words,  a  "form  of  com- 
munion with  the  master  of  life";^  Christian  theism  is  the  form  of 
philosophy  reached  by  the  reasoning  which  starts  from  the  ex- 
perience of  the  Christian  life.  In  this  brief  paper  which,  from 
the  limits  of  time  imposed,  must  be  mainly  expository,  only 
secondarily  critical,  and  not  in  any  degree  constructive — I  wish 
to  set  forth  the  teachings  of  Professor  Royce  which  seem  to  me 
in  essential  harmony  with  those  of  Christian  theism.  My 
exposition  is  based  largely,  though  not  entirely,  upon  two  works 
of  what  might  be  called  his  middle  period.  The  Conception  of 
God  and  The  World  and  the  Individual;  and  I  have  a  two- 
fold justification  for  this  restriction.  In  the  first  place,  Royce 
says  explicitly  in  the  preface  of  The  Philosophy  oj  Loyalty  (1908) 
that  he  has  no  change  to  report  in  his  "fundamental  metaphysical 
theses";  and  he  characterizes  the  teachings  of  The  Problem  of 
Christianity  (1914)  as  in  "essential  harmony  with  the  bases  of 
the  philosophical  idealism  set  forth  in  earlier  volumes."^  My 
second  reason  for  treating  only  incidentally  the  later  books  in 
which  Dr.  Royce  concerns  himself  specifically  with  problems  of 
religion  is  that  these  books  avowedly  or  implicitly  discuss  religion 
in  its  non-theistic  aspect.  In  The  Problem  of  Christianity  this 
limitation  of  the  subject  is  avowed  over  and  over  again.  Con- 
sideration of  the  relation  between  God  and  man  is  dismissed  as  a 
'metaphysical  issue';  and  the  discussion  is  restricted  to  'human 
objects'  in  order  'deliberately  [to]  avoid  theology. '"'  Of  neces- 
sity, therefore,  if  we  seek  the  foundations  of  theism  we  must  seek 

1  Substantially  as  read  at  the  meeting  of  the  American  Philosophical  Association, 
December  28,  1915. 

2  Sources  of  Religious  Insight,  p.  220. 

»  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  Vol.  I,  p.  X.     Cf.  Vol.  II.  pp.  292,  295. 
*  Ibid.,  I.  p.  374. 

282 


ROYCE'S  PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIAN  THEISM.        283 

them  in  the  earlier  and  less  predominantly  ethical  and  psycho- 
logical works  of  Professor  Royce. 

In  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy  (1892)  Dr.  Royce  explicitly 
labels  himself  as  "a  theist."^  In  The  Conception  of  God  (1895 
and  1897)  he  characterizes  his  view  as  "distinctly  theistic  and  not 
pantheistic, "2  and  insists  that  "what  the  faith  of  our  fathers  has 
genuinely  meant  by  God  is  .  .  .  identical  with  the  inevitable 
outcome  of  a  reflective  philosophy."^  The  argument  by  which 
this  theistic  position  is  reached  is  so  well-known  that  it  need  be 
suggested  in  only  the  briefest  fashion.  1 1  will  be  found,  in  greater 
or  less  elaboration,  in  every  one  of  Royce's  books,  beginning  with 
The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy.  The  realistic  conception  of 
reality  external  to  mind  is  found  to  involve  internal  inconsistency* 
and  the  universe  is  accordingly  conceived  as  through  and  through 
ideal.  This  ideal  world,  in  the  second  place,  is  shown  to  be 
rightly  viewed  only  as  a  world  of  interrelated  selves.^  And  each 
of  these  selves,  it  is  argued,  directly  knows — as  well  through  its 
error  as  through  its  aspiration — the  existence  of  a  reality-greater- 
than-itself.  This  Greater  Reality  must,  finally — in  accordance 
with  the  personalistic  premiss  of  the  argument — be  a  Greater 
Self  of  which  each  lesser  self  is  an  identical  part  yet  by  which  it  is 
transcended.®  The  specifically  theistic  form  of  this  argument 
stresses  the  infinite  possibility  of  error  and  thus  leads  inevitably 
to  the  conclusion^  that  the  transcending  (yet  immanent)  Self  is 
infinite,  all-including.  The  characteristic  features  of  this  argu- 
ment, as  is  well  known,  are,  first,  the  completely  empirical  start- 
ing-point from  facts  of  the  scientific  and  the  moral  life,  and, 
second,  the  substitution  for  a  causal  argument  to  the  existence  of 
God  of  an  argument  based,  in  Royce's  phrase,  on  correspondence^ 

'P-347. 

2  The  Conception  of  God,  second  edition,  p.  49. 

5  Ibid.,  p.  50. 

*  Cf.  especially,  The  World  and  the  Individual,  I,  Lecture  III. 

^  Cf.  especially,  The  World  and  the  Individual,  II,  Lectures  IV.  and  V. 

«  Cf .  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  pp.  422  ff.;  The  Spirit  of  Modern 
Philosophy,  p.  380;  The  Conception  of  God,  second  edition,  pp.  41  et  al.;  The  World 
and  the  Individual,  II,  p.  298  f..  Sources  of  Religious  Insight,  pp.  io8  f. 

^  Cf.  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  chapter  XI,  especially,  pp.  424  ff.,  and 
The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  end  of  p.  425. 

*  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  354. 


284  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

— the  correspondence  of  individual  purpose  with  super-individual 
experience.  The  outcome  is  the  conception  of  the  Universe  as 
Absolute  Self — as  All-Knower  to  whom  "is  present  all  possible 
truth ";i  as  Infinite  Will-  realizing  itself  'in  the  unity  of  its  one 
life.'  And  this  'Supreme  Person'  is,  furthermore,  conceived  as 
All-Enfolder,3  as  organic  unity  of  all  the  myriads  of  existent 
partial  selves. 

The  main  purpose  of  this  paper,  as  already  stated,  is  to  point 
out  the  theistic  conceptions  inherent  in  the  philosophical  system 
so  summarily  formulated  and,  in  particular,  to  emphasize  the 
peculiarly  Christian  features  of  the  teaching. 

I.  "God"  in  the  words  of  the  Westminster  Catechism  "is  a 
Spirit,  infinite,  eternal,  and  unchangeable  in  his  being,  wisdom, 
power,  holiness,  justice,  goodness  and  truth."  In  essential 
conformity  with  this  doctrine,  Royce  teaches  that  God  is  an 
infinite,^  or  absolute,^  self-conscious^  person/  an  Individual,^ 
in  fact  "the  only  ultimately  real  individual,"  to  whom  the  whole 
temporal  process  is  eternally  present.^ 

There  is  no  need  to  argue  that  the  conception  of  God  as  spirit, 
or  person,  is  fundamental  to  Christian  theism  but  I  must  make 
good  my  assertion  that  Royce  should  be  interpreted  as  using  the 
words  'self-conscious,'  'person,'  and  'individual'  in  what  is 
qualitatively  the  sense  in  which  they  are  applied  to  human  beings. 
Christian  theism  is  distinguished  from  many  forms  of  'natural 
religion'  by  its  conception  of  God  as  essentially  like-minded  with 
us  human  selves.     There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  is  also  Royce's 

'  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  424^;  The  Conception  of  God,  pp.  12  f.; 
The  World  and  the  Individual,  I,  p.  426;  Ibid.,  II,  pp.  299,  364;  Sources  of  Religious 
Insight,  p.  134. 

2  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  452;  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy, 
pp.  429  f.,  436';  The  Conception  of  God,  pp.  13,  202  f..  272;  The  World  and  the 
Individual,  I,  pp.  459*,  461;  Ibid.,  II,  p.  398. 

'  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  pp.  435,  441;  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philos- 
ophy, pp.  3732,  379<.  418';  The  World  and  the  Individual,  I,  pp.  341,  418'. 

*  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  pp.  434  et  al..  483. 

'  The  Conception  of  God,  and  The  World  and  Individual,  passim. 

'Ibid.,  II,  p.  336;  Conception  of  God,  p.  302. 

'  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  380;  The  Conception  of  God.  p.  349;  The 
World  and  the  Individual,  II.  p.  418. 

»  Ibid.,  I.,  pp.  40, 

*Ibid„  II. 


No.  3.]    ROYCES  PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIAN  THEISM.        285 

teaching  about  the  Absolute.  "Unless,"  he  says,  "the  Absolute 
knows  what  we  know  when  we  endure  and  wait,  .  .  .  when  we  long 
and  suffer,  the  Absolute  in  so  far  is  less  and  not  more  than  we 
are."^  In  truth,  all  that  exists,  including  my  own  feeling  and 
thought  and  percept,  exists  only  by  virtue  of  being  experienced 
by  the  Absolute  Self. 

To  prove  the  equivalence  of  the  Absolute  to  the  Christian's 
God  it  is,  in  the  second  place,  necessary  to  show  that  by  'Ab- 
solute Self  Royce  means  a  genuine  person  who  "is  .  .  .  and  knows 
us,"2  in  whose  'presence'  I  may  stand,^  who  "values  and  needs" 
my  "deed";^  and,  conversely,  that  he  does  not  mean  by  'Ab- 
solute Self  a  mere  aggregate  of  finite  selves;  that  his  self-con- 
scious, absolute  person  is  not  an  unknown  Absolute  'coming  to 
consciousnesss'  in  the  totality  of  finite,  or  partial,  selves.  In 
truth.  Professor  Royce  has  fully  guarded  himself  against  this 
essentially  pluralistic  interpretation  of  his  doctrine.  "The 
Absolute  Unity  of  Consciousness,"  he  writes,  "contains  not  merely 
finite  types  of  self-consciousness  but  the  .  .  .  consciousness  of  its 
own  being  as  Thinker,  Experiencer,  Seer,  Love,  Will."^  By  this 
statement  Dr.  Royce  invests  the  Absolute  with  a  'consciousness 
of  its  own'  explicitly  contrasted  with  'finite  types  of  conscious- 
ness.' In  the  following  words  he  attributes  to  the  Absolute  both 
the  human  and  the  more-than-human  experience.  "I  hold," 
he  says,  "that  all  finite  consciousness  jW5^  as  it  is  in  us — ignor- 
ance, striving,  defeat  .  .  .  narrowness — is  all  present  from  the 
Absolute  point  of  view  but  is  also  seen  in  unity  with  the  solution 
of  problems  .  .  .  the  overcoming  of  defeats  .  .  .  the  supple- 
menting of  all  narrowness."^  By  these  words  Royce  clearly 
indicates  that,  in  his  view,  the  Absolute  has  an  experience  tran- 
scending, though  not  'external  to,'  that  of  the  human  selves. 
Many  other  quotations  might  be  made  to  substantiate  my  con- 
clusion that  the  Absolute  of  Royce's  system  is  'a  person'  in  the 

1  The  World  and  the  Individual,  II,  p.  364. 

2  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  471. 

3  The  World  and  the  Individual,  II,  p.  150. 
*  The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  pp.  396-397. 
5  The  Conception  of  God,  p.  301. 

«  The  World  and  the  Individual,  II,  p.  302.     Italics  of  second  phrase  mine. 


286  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

sense  in  which  the  Christian's  God  is  a  person,  and  neither  an 
aggregate  nor  an  Unknown  Reality.  A  similar  conclusion  must 
be  drawn  from  Royce's  trenchant  criticism  of  Bradley's  concep- 
tion of  an  Absolute  Experience  which  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  an 
Absolute  Self.  "The  Absolute,"  Royce  concludes  "escapes 
from  selfhood  and  all  that  selfhood  implies,  or  even  transcends 
selfhood,  only,  by  remaining  to  the  end  a  Self."^ 

This  conclusion  can  not,  however,  fairly  be  stated  without 
consideration  of  the  question  whether  it  rightly  represents  the 
outcome  of  Professor  Royce's  most  recent  thinking.  In  his 
later  books  The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  Sources  of  Religious  Insight 
and  The  Problem  of  Christianity  the  expression  'Absolute  Self ' 
occurs  incidentally  or  not  at  all;  and  the  experience,  referred  to 
in  all  these  books,  which  transcends  and  completes  that  of  the 
human  self  is  variously  known  as  the  'wider'  or  'superhuman'  or 
'superindividual  insight,'^  'the  conscious  and  superhuman  unity 
of  life'^  or  'conspectus  of  the  totality  of  life';^  and,  finally,  as 
the  'Beloved  Community.'^  We  may  profitably  neglect  the 
vaguer  and  less  closely  analyzed  terms  'superhuman  insight' 
and  'unity  of  life'  and  confine  our  attention  to  the  problem  pre- 
sented to  us  by  Dr.  Royce's  explicit  statement  of  "the  thesis 
.  .  .  that  the  essence  of  Christianity,  as  the  Apostle  Paul  stated 
the  essence,  depends  upon  regarding  the  being  [called]  .  .  .  the 
'Beloved  Community'  as  the  true  source,  through  loyalty,  of  the 
salvation  of  man"^  and  by  his  further  delaration  that  he  holds 
"this  doctrine  ...  to  be  both  empirically  verifiable  within  the 
limits  of  our  experience  and  metaphysically  defensible  as  an 
expression  of  the  life  and  spiritual  significance  of  the  whole 
universe."  Our  problem  of  interpretation  is  precisely  formu- 
lated in  the  question :  does  Royce  intend  either  to  supplant  or  to 
reinterpret  his  earlier  conception  of  the  Absolute  Self  by  the 
doctrine  of  the  Beloved  Community?     An  affirmative  answer 

1  The  World  and  the  Individual,  I,  p.  552. 

2  Sources  of  Religious  Insight,  pp.  108,  112  et  al. 
'  The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  p.  357,  376. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  395.  Cf.  pp.  369,  372. 

'  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  passim. 

« Ibid.,  I,  p.  26.     Cf.  p.  417  and  II,  p.  390. 


No.  3.]     ROYCE'S  PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIAN  THEISM.        287 

to  the  question  would  of  course  invalidate  the  conclusion,  based 
on  the  study  of  Royce's  earlier  books,  that  his  position  coincides 
with  that  of  the  Christian  theist,  for  every  theist  distinguishes 
between  God  and  the  church.^  To  the  discussion  of  this  problem 
the  next  following  paragraphs  are  devoted. 

Unquestionably,  Royce  seems  by  certain  statements  to  make 
the  universal  community  equivalent  to  the  Self  of  his  earlier  books. 
He  declares  "  this  essentially  social  universe  ...  to  be  real, 
and  to  be  in  fact  the  sole  and  supreme  reality — the  Absolute, '^ 
and  he  asks:  "What  kind  of  salvation  does  it  offer?  .  .  .  What 
does  it  call  upon  a  reasonable  man  to  do?"  Yet,  in  spite  of 
expressions  like  these,  I  believe  that  Royce  does  not  actually 
identify  the  Absolute  Self  with  the  Universal  Community.  His 
meaning,  as  I  conceive  it,  is  more  exactly  stated  when  he  says 
that  "the  divine  life  is  expressed  in  the  form  of  a  community" 
and  that  "the  whole  real  world  is  the  expression  of  one  divine 
process  .  .  .  the  process  of  the  Spirit."^  'To  be  expressed 
by'  does  not  mean  'to  be  constituted  by';  and  the  'divine  life' 
and  'the  spirit'  are  distinguished  from  the  'community'  and 
from  the  world,  though  not  external  to  them.*  This  is  the 
meaning,  also,  of  the  repeated  assertion  that  the  real  world, 
conceived  in  Charles  Peirce's  fashion,  as  a  vast  system  of  signs, 
"contains  the  interpreter  of  these  signs.  ...  Its  processes," 
Royce  adds,  "are  infinite  in  their  temporal  varieties.  But  their 
interpreter,  the  spirit  of  this  universal  community, — never 
absorbing  varieties  nor  permitting  them  to  blend — compares, 
and,  through  a  real  life,  interprets  them  all."^  The  plain  impli- 
cation of  these  passages  is  that  'interpreter'  and  'spirit'  not  only 
include  but  transcend  world  and  church.  Thus,  it  is  at  least 
compatible  with  the  main  trend  of  The  Problem  of  Christianity 
to  suppose  that  Royce,  while  primarily  conceiving  Christianity 
in  its  relation  to  the  church,  or  beloved  community,  none  the 
less  distinguishes  God  as  spirit,  counsellor,  or  interpreter  from 

1  Cf.  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  I.  p.  105. 

2  Ibid.,  II,  p.  296;  cf.  pp.  281,  390. 

3  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  II,  pp.  388,  373.     Italics  mine. 
*  Ibid.,  pp.  359,  362,  373. 

5  Ibid.,  II,  pp.  291,  324;  cf.  p«  272. 


288  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

the  church  in  which  he  expresses  himself  and  from  the  world 
which  he  interprets.  (The  Christian  theologian  will  not  fail  to 
remark  the  virtual  identity,  explicitly  stressed  by  Royce,  between 
God  conceived  as  spirit  indwelling  in  the  beloved  community 
and  the  Holy  Spirit,  third  Person  of  the  Christian  Trinity.^ 
The  conception  of  the  Beloved  Community  thus  illuminates  one 
of  the  most  dimly  apprehended  of  Christian  doctrines.)-  A 
second  confirmation  of  this  view,  that  Royce  distinguishes  God 
from  the  community,  is  gained  by  a  scrutiny  of  the  argument 
by  which  he  seeks  to  establish  the  existence  of  the  community  as 
'a  sort  of  supra-personal  being '^  with  'a  mind  of  its  own.'^  The 
argument,  like  most  of  those  in  Royce's  later  books,  differs 
toto  ccelo  from  the  closely  articulated,  logically  ordered  reasoning 
of  his  strictly  metaphysical  works.  It  consists  partly  in  the 
observation  that  custom,  language,  and  religions  are  products  of 
community  life^  and  partly  in  the  significant  teaching  that  an 
individual  "may  love  his  community  as  if  it  were  a  person."^ 
But  all  this  proves  not  at  all  that  a  community  is  a  self,  or 
person,  but  merely — to  quote  Royce  himself — that  it  'behaves' 
and  is  treated  'as  if '  a  person. 

This  interpretation  of  Royce's  conception  is  in  complete  har- 
mony with  the  detailed  teaching  of  a  relatively  recent  paper.'' 
"God,"  he  writes,  "as  our  philosophy  ought  to  conceive  him,  is 
indeed  a  spirit  and  a  person;  but  he  is  not  a  being  who  exists 
in  separation  from  the  world,  simply  as  its  external  creator.  He 
expresses  himself  in  the  world,  and  the  world  is  simply  his  own 
life  as  he  lives  it  out.  .  .  .  You  can  indeed  distinguish  between 
the  world  as  our  common  sense,  properly  but  fragmentarily,  has 
to  view  it  and  as  our  sciences  study  it  ,  .  .  and  God,  who  is 

'  Ibid.,  II,  pp.  14  ff.  It  may  be  noted  that  this  doctrine  is  in  harmony  with 
Hegel's  teaching,  though  entirely  independent  of  it. 

2  The  two  preceding  sentences  have  been  added  to  the  paper  as  read. 

3  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  I,  p.  67. 
<  Ibid.,  p.  62;  cf.  II,  p.  87. 

6  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  I,  p.  62. 

« Ibid.,  p.  67;  cf.  p.  loi  and  II,  pp.  91  ff. 

'"What  is  Vital  in  Christianity."  Prepared  for  a  series  of  addresses  to  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  of  Harvard  University  in  1909.  In  William 
James  and  Other  Essays. 


No.  3.]    ROYCE'S  PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIAN  THEISM.        289 

infinitely  more  than  any  finite  system  of  natural  facts  or  of 
human  lives  can  express.  .  .  .  This  entire  world  is  present  at 
once  to  the  eternal,  divine  consciousness  as  a  single  whole,  and 
this  whole  is  what  the  absolute  chooses  as  his  own  expression."^ 
Evidently  Royce  teaches,  to  use  the  traditional  theological  phrase- 
ology, not  only  the  immanence  but  the  transcendence  of  God; 
he  conceives  God  not  only  as  "the  divine  being"  who  is  "the 
very  life  of  the  community  "^  but  as  a  spirit  who  views  the  world 
"from  above."^ 

II.  Royce's  doctrine  of  the  relation  of  man  to  God  more  ob- 
viously coincides  with  the  teaching  of  Christian  theism.  In 
conformity  with  the  profoundest  Christian  conceptions  he  holds 
(a)  that  God  shares  every  human  experience,  and  that  the  life 
which  man  shares  with  God  is  essentially  good,  not  evil;  (b)  that 
every  human  being  is  an  expression  of  God's  individuating  will; 
(c)  that  the  human  self  has  a  relative  freedom;  that  he  may  and 
actually  does,  act  in  opposition  to  the  divine  will  and  that  his 
sin  must  be  atoned  for;  (d)  that  the  human  self  is  an  essentially 
social  being. 

(a)  The  Christian  conception,  based  on  the  Master's  teaching,  of 
God  as  father,  although  not  literally  an  innovation  in  religious 
doctrine,  was  so  vitalized  by  the  life  and  words  of  Jesus  that  it 
rooted  itself  in  the  hearts  of  men.  Perhaps  the  most  fundamental 
contribution  of  Royce  to  Christian  thought  consists  precisely 
in  the  fact  that  he  argues  the  inherent  metaphysical  necessity  of 
this  conception  which  Jesus  revealed  to  his  disciples  and  which 
traditional  theology  laboriously  tries  to  establish  by  a  'cosmo- 
logical '  argument  to  God  as  '  first '  of  temporal  causes  or  by  a 
design-argument  based  on  arbitrarily  selected  facts.  To  Royce, 
on  the  other  hand,  this  doctrine  is  an  immediate  consequence  of 
the  conception  of  God  as  All-Experiencer,  as  Absolute  Knower. 
For,  according  to  his  absolutistic  yet  personalistic  philosophy, 
the  percepts,  the  thoughts,  the  sorrows,  the  fidelities  of  every 
least  human  self  are  real  only  in  so  far  as  the  Absolute  Self 

1  op.  cit.,  pp.  167-169. 

*  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  II,  p.  75. 

»  "What  is  Vital  in  Christianity,"  op.  cit.,  p.  168. 


290  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

experiences  them  and  "knows  [them]  to  be  whatever  they 
are."i 

Even  in  its  supreme  conception  of  God  as  suffering,  as  'touched 
with  the  feeling  of  our  infirmities'  and  'afflicted  in  our  affliction,' 
the  Christian  doctrine  that  God  is  Father  of  men  follows  at  once 
from  the  absolutist's  conception  of  God — and  from  this  con- 
ception only.  The  pluralistic  theist,  who  teaches  that  God 
shares  human  experience,  must  meet  insistent  difficulties:  How 
should  God  know  me  if  I  am  separate  from  him?  And  how  can 
he  share  my  experience  when  he  is  all-wise  and  all-powerful  and 
I  am  so  palpably  ignorant  and  so  piteously  ineffective?  But 
this  Roycian  God  is  my  Greater  Self;  I  am  'identically  a  part' 
of  him.  I  exist,  and  even  my  erroneous  conception  exists,  only 
as  each  is  a  transcended  object  of  his  experience.  He  is  indeed 
afflicted  in  my  affliction,  for  it  is  real  only  as  he  experiences  it. 

At  this  point  emerges  another  peculiarly  Christian  feature  of 
Royce's  theism.  "God,  in  his  being,"  the  Westminster  catechism 
continues,  "is  wisdom,  power,  holiness,  justice,  goodness  and 
truth."  But  Christian  philosophy  from  its  very  beginning 
has  found  difflculty  in  justifying  God  and  has  found  itself  obliged 
to  sacrifice  now  the  belief  in  God's  goodness,  now  the  conviction 
of  his  power,  to  the  flinty  facts  of  pain,  stupidity,  and  sin. 
Royce's  philosophy  is,  as  all  readers  of  him  know,  an  optimistic 
conception  of  a  good  God.  It  is  an  invincible  optimism  for  it 
cherishes  no  illusions,  and  afiirms  instead  of  ignoring  the  'ca- 
priciousness  of  life,'  'the  degradation  of  the  sinner's  passive 
victim,'  the  'brute  chance'  and  the  mechanical  accidents  to  which 
the  nature-world  is  prey.^  Professor  Royce  does  not,  to  be  sure, 
claim  to  offer  a  specific  explanation  of  specific  evils.  But  he 
guides  the  thought  of  the  Christian  philosopher  into  a  peaceful 
way,  a  metaphysical  assurance  that  the  world,  inclusive  of  this 
my  dastard  sin  or  blinding  grief,  is  expression  of  the  will  of  an 
all-wise  chooser  who  is  himself  suffering  every  grief  and  stung 
by  every  sin.  Though  "he  knows  [the  evils]  as  we  in  our  finitude 
can  not,"  yet  "  he  endures  them  as  we  do.     And  so,  if  knowing 

'  The  World  and  the  Individual,  II,  p.  346. 
2  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  pp.  467-468. 


No.  3.]    ROYCE'S  PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIAN  THEISM.        291 

them  he  wills  these  horrors  for  himself,  must  he  not  know  where- 
fore?"^ 

(b)  The  Christian  doctrine  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  directly 
implies  that  other  Christian  doctrine  of  the  uniqueness  and  value 
of  the  human  soul.  For  it  belongs  to  every  parent  to  individualize 
his  children.  The  most  ordinary  child  in  a  long  school  procession 
of  little  replicas  of  himself  is  instantly  descried  and  selected  by 
the  individualizing  eye  of  watching  father  and  mother.  And 
Christianity,  which  teaches  that  God  is  a  father,  of  necessity 
teaches  that  the  human  soul  is  a  'pearl  of  great  price,'  a  '  treasure 
hid  in  a  field' — a  coin,  a  sheep  which,  if  lost,  must  be  sought 
for  till  it  is  found.  Now  this  religious  teaching,  also,  is  meta- 
physically justified  by  the  Roycian  doctrine  that  every  man  is 
the  expression  of  a  unique  purpose  of  the  Absolute  Self.  To  the 
conventional  critic's  protest  that  the  human  self  would  be  lost 
in  the  Absolute  'as  a  river  in  the  sea,'  Royce  replies  that  on  the 
contrary,  the  rich  variety,  the  distinctness,  and  the  stability  of 
the  Absolute's  purposes  furnish  the  only  guarantee  of  the  in- 
dividuality of  the  human  self.  .  .  .  The  identity  of  the  partial 
self  with  the  Absolute  is  never,  in  his  view,  a  mere  identity 
without  a  difference." 

(c)  Royce  teaches,  in  the  third  place,  that  the  partial  or  human 
self  has  a  'relatively  free'  will.^  He  accepts  ("provisionally" 
however)  "so  much  of  the  verdict  of  common  sense  as  any  man 
accepts  when  he  says:  That  was  my  own  voluntary  deed,  and 
was  knowingly  and  willingly  sinful."  The  metaphysical  recon- 
ciliation of  the  absoluteness  of  the  divine  will  and  the  divine 
experience  with  even  this  relative  human  freedom  Royce  has, 
in  my  opinion,  insufficiently  worked  out.  To  be  sure,  he  regards 
the  freedom  as  merely  relative:  the  Absolute  is  the  triumphing, 
creative  Will.  And  it  is  the  temporal,  not  the  more-than-tem- 
poral,  finite  self  of  which  Royce  says  that  "it  was  good  that  he 
should  be  free."  Yet  with  all  these  qualifications  the  question 
persists:  how  can  a  human  self  be  free  to  oppose  the  will  of  Him 
by  whose  selective  attention  all  that  exists  has  its  being?  how 

'  op.  cit.,  pp.  469-70. 

2  The  World  and  the  Individual,  II,  p.  426;  cf.  p.  398. 


292  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

can  I,  in  Royce's phrase,  "choose  to  forget"?  how  can  I  "become 
a  conscious  and  deliberate  traitor"?^  The  truth  is  that  Royce 
seems  to  discuss  sin  psychologically  and  ethically  rather  than 
metaphysically.  And  the  result  is  that  we  have  in  his  pages  a 
masterly  psychological  analysis  of  that  violation  of  moral  loyalty 
which  he  calls  sin^  and  which  he  will  not  have  smoothed  away 
or  ignored.  Organically  related  to  this  conception  of  sin^  is 
Royce's  formulation  of  the  great  doctrine  of  the  atonement — an 
idea,  Royce  says,  which  "if  there  were  no  Christianity  would  have 
to  be  invented  before  the  higher  levels  of  our  moral  existence 
could  be  fairly  understood."^  There  is  atonement,  Royce  pro- 
ceeds, when  a  creative  deed  is  made  possible  by  a  treason  and 
when  "the  world,  as  transformed  by  this  creative  deed,  is  better 
than  it  would  have  been  had  that  deed  of  treason  not  been  done 
at  all."^  Atonement,  in  this  sense,  as  he  rightly  asserts,  is  a 
fact  "as  familiar  and  empirical  as  death  or  grief."^  Evidently, 
this  teaching  interprets  the  experience  of  a  suffering  and  atoning 
God  as  truly  as  it  describes  a  human  consciousness,  but — true 
to  the  arbitrary  limits  which  he  has  set  to  his  discussion — Royce 
simply  'ignores'  atonement  'as  between  God  and  man.'^ 

{d)  There  is  little  time,  and  probably  little  need,  to  summarize 
Royce's  description  of  the  Church,  or  'Beloved  Community.' 
The  meaning  of  the  term  'community'  is  precisely  stated  and 
richly  illustrated.  " There  are,"  Royce  points  out,  "in  the  human 
world  two  profoundly  different  grades,  or  levels,  of  mental  beings 
— namely  the  beings  that  we  usually  call  human  individuals  and 
the  beings  that  we  call  communities.  ...  Of  the  second  of  these 
levels,  a  well-trained  chorus,  ...  or  an  athletic  team  during  a 
contest,  or  a  committee  in  deliberation  .  .  .  — all  these  are  good 
examples."^     "And  yet  a  community  is  not,"  Royce  repeatedly 

1  The  World  and  Ihe  Individual.  II,  p.  359;  Problem  of  Christianity,  I,  p.  252. 

2  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  I,  p.  242. 

'  It  is  beside  the  purpose  of  this  paper  to  stress  the  fact  that  in  spite  of  Royce's 
over-emphasis  of  the  Pauline  factor  of  Christianity  he  explicitly  adopts  Jesus's 
teaching  about  sin  rather  than  Paul's.     Cf.  Problem  of  Christianity,  I,  pp.  225,  227  flf. 

■•  Ibid.,  p.  271  et  al. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  307  f. 

« Ibid.,  p.  304. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  305. 

^The  Problem  of  Christianity,  I,  pp.  164-165. 


No.  3.]    ROYCE'S  PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIAN  THEISM.        293 

states,  "  a  mere  collection  of  individuals."^  It  is,  on  the  contrary 
"a  sort  of  live  unit  that  has  organs";^  it  "grows  and  decays"^; 
it  "has  a  mind"  whose  "intelligent  mental  products,"  namely, 
languages,  customs,  and  religions,  "follow  psychological  laws."* 
"A  community  behaves  like  an  entity,  with  a  mind  of  its  own,"^ 
it  "can  love"  and  act;^  and,  conversely,  it  can  be  loved  and 
served.^  The  Beloved  Community,  or  Church,  which  now 
becomes  for  Royce  at  once  the  'human  founder'^  of  Christianity, 
the  source  of  salvation,  and  the  object  of  the  characteristically 
Christian  consciousness — the  Beloved  Community  is  distin- 
guished from  the  ordinary  community  by  its  comprehensiveness, 
and  by  its  'uniting  many  selves  into  one':  it  is,  in  a  word,  the 
'Universal  Community.'^  To  discuss,  in  any  detail,  the  impli- 
cations of  this  conception  would  far  overflow  the  boundaries  of 
time  allotted  to  this  paper.  But  a  final  comment  must  be 
made  on  the  inadequacy  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Beloved  Com- 
munity if  it  must  be  regarded,  as  apparently  its  author  regards 
it,  as  an  account  of  the  historic  Christian  Church.  jThe  cardinal 
defect  in  Royce's  conception  is — psychologically  stated^his 
undue  subordination  of  the  role  of  the  leader  to  that  of  the  group, 
or — historically  stated — his  underestimation  of  the  fact  that 
passionate  loyalty  to  the  person  of  Christ  was  the  bond  of  unity 
in  the  early  Christian  church.  On  the  other  hand,  Christianity 
truly  is,  as  Royce  insists,  an  inherently  social  religion ;  and  loyalty 
to  the  universal  community  is  indeed  the  essential  moral  factor 
of  the  Christian  religion.  Mary  Whiton  Calkins. 

Wellesley  College. 

Comment  by  Professor  Royce.    Extracts  from  a  Letter 
TO  Miss  Calkins,  March  20,  1916. 
"The  account  which  you  kindly  give  of  the  position  taken  in 
my  earlier  books, — that  is,  in  all  the  books  that  precede  The 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  62. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  62. 

^  Ibid.,  pp.  64-65;  cf.  p.  167. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  95. 

^  Ibid.,  pp.  67,  95,  loi. 

'Ibid.,  p.  417. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  99. 

8  Ibid.,  p.  2X2  et  al. 


294  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Problem  of  Christianity, — is  as  accurate  and  scholarly  as  it  is 
friendly.  I  am  not  conscious  of  having  taken  in  my  recent  work 
a  position  inconsistent  in  its  genuine  meaning  with  the  positions 
which  you  recognize.  Therefore,  precisely  in  so  far,  I  have  and 
can  have  only  thanks  for  your  interpretation  and  for  your  aid. 

"But  the  two  central  ideas  upon  which  my  Problem  of  Christi- 
anity turns,  the  idea  of  the  community,  and  the  idea  of  what 
the  historical  theology  of  the  Christian  church  early  learned  to 
call  'the  holy  spirit'  are  ideas  which  are  as  living,  and  growing, 
as  they  are  ancient.  They  grew  when  the  prophets  of  Israel 
began  to  formulate  their  doctrine  of  Jerusalem,  which,  in  the 
beginning  was  a  city,  of  somewhat  questionable  architecture 
and  morals,  in  the  hill  districts  of  Judea;  but  which,  in  the  end, 
became  the  heavenly  realm  of  which  the  mystic  author  of  the 
well-known  mediaeval  hymn  wrote,  and  which  the  world  is  still 
trying  to  understand.  These  two  ideas,  the  Community,  and 
the  Spirit,  have  been  growing  ever  since.  They  are  growing 
today.  They  certainly  have  assumed,  in  my  own  mind,  a  new 
vitality,  and  a  very  much  deeper  significance  than,  for  me, 
they  ever  had  before  I  wrote  my  Problem  of  Christianity.  That 
book  records  the  experience  and  the  reflections  which  have  been 
working  in  my  mind  daily  more  and  more  ever  since  I  wrote  it. 
These  reflections  constitute  for  me,  not  something  inconsistent 
with  my  former  position,  but  a  distinct  addition  to  my  former 
position,  a  new  attainment, — I  believe  a  new  growth.  I  do  not 
believe  that  you  change  in  a  way  involving  inconsistency  when 
you  reinterpret  former  ideas. 

"To  borrow  a  figure  from  a  remote  field,  I  do  not  believe  that 
Lincoln  acted  in  a  manner  essentially  inconsistent  with  his 
earlier  political  ideas  when  he  wrote  the  Emancipation  Procla- 
mation and  freed  the  slaves.  To  be  sure,  before  he  wrote  that 
Proclamation,  he  had  seen  a  new  light.  My  poor  little  book  on 
The  Problem  of  Christianity  is  certainly  no  Emancipation  Procla- 
mation, and  is  certainly  no  document  of  any  considerable  im- 
portance. But  it  certainly  is  the  product  of  what  for  me  is  a 
new  light,  of  a  new  experience,  of  ideas  which  are  as  new  to  me 
as  the  original  form  of  my  idealism  was  new  to  me  when  I  first 
defined  it. 


No.  3.]    ROYCE'S  PHILOSOPHY  AND  CHRISTIAN  THEISM.        295 

"As  for  what  my  present  position  means,  let  me  say  only  this: 
For  me,  at  present,  a  genuinely  and  loyally  united  community 
which  lives  a  coherent  life,  is,  in  a  perfectly  literal  sense,  a  person. 
Such  a  person,  for  Paul,  the  Church  of  Christ  was.  On  the 
other  hand,  any  human  individual  person,  in  a  perfectly  literal 
sense,  is  a  community.  The  coherent  life  which  includes  past, 
present,  and  future,  and  holds  them  reasonably  together,  is  the 
life  of  what  I  have  called  a  Community  of  Interpretation,  in 
which  the  present,  with  an  endless  fecundity  of  invention,  inter- 
prets the  past  to  the  future,  precisely  as,  in  the  Pauline-Johannine 
type  of  theology,  Christ,  or  the  Spirit,  interprets  the  united 
individuals  who  constitute  the  human  aspect  of  the  Church  to 
the  divine  being  in  whom  these  members  seek,  at  once  their 
fulfilment,  their  unity,  their  diversity,  and  the  goal  of  their 
loyalty.  All  this  is  a  scrap  of  theology,  which  serves  as  a  hint 
of  what  I  have  been  trying  to  formulate  in  this  recent  phase,  not 
merely  of  my  thinking,  but  of  my  experience.  I  do  not  know 
any  reason  why  this  phase  of  my  thinking  should  attract  any 
other  interest  than  what  may  be  due  to  its  actual  relations  to  a 
process  which  has  been  going  on  in  human  thought  ever  since 
Heraclitus  remarked  that  the  Logos  is  fluent,  and  ever  since  Israel 
began  to  idealize  the  life  of  a  little  hill  town  in  Judea. 

"I  stand  for  the  importance  of  this  process,  which  has  led 
Christianity  to  regard  a  community  not  merely  as  an  aggregate 
but  as  a  Person,  and  at  the  same  time  to  enrich  its  ideal  memory 
of  a  person  until  he  became  transformed  into  a  Community. 

"The  process  in  question  is  not  merely  theological,  and  is  not 
merely  mystical,  still  less  merely  mythical.  Nor  is  it  a  process 
invented  merely  by  abstract  metaphysicians.  It  is  the  process 
which  Victor  Hugo  expressed  in  Les  Miserahles  when  he  put  into 
the  mouth  of  Enjolrasthe  words, '  Ma  mere,  c'est  la  republique.' 
As  I  write  you  these  words,  Frenchmen  are  writing  the  meaning 
of  these  words  in  their  blood,  about  Verdun.  The  mother  which 
is  a  republic  is  a  community  which  is  also  a  person,  and  not 
merely  an  aggregate,  and  not  merely  by  metaphor  a  person. 
Precisely  so,  the  individual  patriot  who  leaves  his  home  behind 
and  steadfastly  serving  presses  on  in  ardent  quest  of  the  moment 


296  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

when  his  life  can  be  fulfilled  by  his  death  for  his  country,  is  all  the 
more  richly  and  deeply  an  individual  that  he  is  also  a  community 
of  interpretation,  whose  life  has  its  unity  in  its  restless  search  for 
death  on  behalf  of  the  great  good  cause, — its  ever-living  Logos 
in  its  fluent  quest  for  the  goal. 

"Now  this  view  is  at  present  an  essential  part  of  my  idealism. 
In  essential  meaning  I  suppose  that  it  always  was  such  an  essen- 
tial part.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  I  ever  told  my  tale  as  fully, 
or  with  the  same  approach  to  the  far-off  goal  of  saying  some- 
thing some  time  that  might  prove  helpful  to  students  of  idealism 
as  in  the  Problem  of  Christianity." 


THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  RELIGION  IN   ROYCE 
AND  DURKHEIM. 

IN  the  introduction  to  his  series  of  Gifford  lectures,  Professor 
Royce  distinguished  three  different  conceptions  of  the  study 
of  natural  religion.  The  first  is  based  upon  the  results  of  natural 
science  accepted  uncritically.  The  second  conception  views 
religion  as  a  confession  of  the  needs  and  the  experiences  of  men, 
as  "  the  voice  of  human  nature  itself."  Now  the  needs  of  human 
nature,  the  problems  and  tasks  of  men  in  society  and  in  the  work 
of  civilization,  are  matters  of  experience  and  of  history,  of  psy- 
chology and  of  the  social  sciences.  One  may  be  distrustful  of 
metaphysics  and  of  every  enterprise  of  philosophical  synthesis 
which  claims  to  be  other  than  a  report  of  the  facts  of  experience, 
and  one  may  nevertheless  be  profoundly  interested  in  the  function 
of  religion  within  experience  and  within  society.  The  sociologist 
will  approach  religion  from  this  second  point  of  view.  The  third 
conception  of  the  study  of  natural  religion  identifies  it  with  a 
study  of  the  most  fundamental  metaphysical  problems.  It 
attempts  the  'contemplation  of  being  as  being.'  It  is  the  tra- 
ditional approach  of  the  technical  philosopher  who  views  the 
significance  of  religion  as  consisting  in  the  truth  of  metaphysical 
doctrines  concerning  the  real  world.  It  is  thus  that  The  World 
and  the  Individual  views  the  problems  of  religion. 

There  is  something  more  than  a  decade  between  The  World  and 
the  Individual  and  The  Problem  of  Christianity.  Here  too  the 
fundamental  problems  of  the  philosophy  of  religion  are  dealt 
with,  but  from  a  point  of  view  decidedly  different  from  that  of 
the  earlier  work.  The  Problem  of  Christianity  approaches  the 
study  of  religion  from  the  second  rather  than  the  third  of  those 
three  conceptions  mentioned  just  now.  The  ideas  and  doctrines 
of  religion  are  here  viewed  as  growing  out  of  the  social  experience 
of  mankind;  they  are  needed  primarily  in  order  to  express  "the 
saving  value  of  the  right  relation  of  any  human  individual  to  the 
community  of  which  he  is  a  member."    They  need  "no  technical 

297 


298  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

metaphysical  theory  to  furnish  a  foundation  for  them."^  The 
intensely  practical  and  empirical  task  of  man  in  building  up  a 
worthy  and  stable  social  order  generates  the  life  of  religion. 
To  be  sure,  it  is  possible  to  exaggerate  this  contrast  between 
The  World  and  the  Individual  and  The  Problem  of  Christianity. 
The  central  metaphysical  thesis  of  the  earlier  book  concerns  pre- 
cisely the  way  in  which  all  true  beliefs,  and  the  real  world  itself, 
are  linked  to  our  practical  interests  and  are  fulfilments  of  pur- 
pose. And  in  the  later  book,  religion  is  viewed  not  only  as  a 
practical  solution  of  a  social  problem,  not  only  as  a  'doctrine  of 
life,'  but  as  a  'doctrine  of  the  real  world'  as  well.  And  this 
'  doctrine  of  the  real  world '  is  essentially  that  of  Royce's  earlier 
writings.  Nevertheless,  the  shift  of  emphasis  and  point  of  view 
from  The  World  and  the  Individual  to  that  of  The  Problem  of 
Christianity  is  significant.  The  sociologist  would  discover,  on  the 
whole,  little  which  concerned  his  own  problems  in  The  World 
and  the  Individual;  he  can  discover  very  much  indeed  in  The 
Problem  of  Christianity,  yet  both  of  them  are  investigations  of 
the  meaning  of  religion. 

It  is  Royce's  interpretation  of  religion  in  terms  of  our  social 
experience  which  invites  comparison  with  other  interpretations 
of  religion  in  similar  terms.  There  are  many  of  these  at  the 
present  time.  One  such  I  here  choose,  that  of  Emile  Durkheim. 
The  significance  of  such  a  comparison  is  enhanced  if  we  remember 
that  Royce  and  Durkheim  are  the  spokesmen  for  two  different 
philosophical  traditions;  the  bearing  of  idealism  and  positivism 
upon  our  social  interests  and  the  tasks  of  civilization  may  become 
apparent  from  a  study  of  these  two  men.  To  select  but  a  few  of 
the  more  prominent  topics  here  which  invite  comparison  and  dis- 
cussion, to  point  out  some  notable  agreements  between  Royce 
and  Durkheim,  and  some  divergencies  as  well,  is  the  object  of 
this  brief  note. 

Royce  and  Durkheim  agree  in  regarding  man's  social  experience 
as,  in  some  sense,  the  source  of  religion,  as  the  region  in  which 
the  dominant  characteristics  of  religion  make  their  appearance, 
and  finally,  as  presenting  man  with  the  objects  of  his  religious 

1  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  Vol.  I,  p.  xx. 


No.  3.]  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  RELIGION.  299 

ideas  and  cult.  That  "the  reaUty  which  rehgious  thought  ex- 
presses is  society,"^ — this  is  the  fundamental  thesis  of  both 
writers.  For  both  men,  religion  is  a  language  which  utters 
truths  about  the  right  relations  between  an  individual  and  some 
community.  No  one  better  than  Royce  has  given  an  interpre- 
tation of  the  traditional  doctrines  of  Christianity  in  terms  of  the 
significance  which  the  community  has  for  the  individual,  in  terms 
of  what  the  community  really  is  and  does.  No  one  better  than 
Durkheim  has  interpreted  primitive  religion  in  terms  of  the 
overwhelming  importance,  in  primitive  life  and  thought,  of 
man's  social  experience.  This  general  agreement  between  Royce 
and  Durkheim  rests  upon  the  thesis,  which  each  of  them  has 
elaborately  defended,  of  the  autonomy,  the  reality,  and  the 
uniqueness  of  society.  Durkheim's  entire  social  philosophy  is  a 
commentary  upon  what  Royce  speaks  of  as  "the  problems  of  the 
two  levels  of  human  existence."^  There  is — so  Durkheim  in  one 
place  sums  up  the  matter — "an  individual  being  which  has  its 
foundation  in  the  organism  and  the  circle  of  whose  activities 
is  therefore  strictly  limited,  and  a  social  being  which  represents 
the  highest  reality  in  the  intellectual  and  moral  order  that  we 
can  know  by  observation — I  mean  society.  ...  In  so  far  as 
he  belongs  to  society,  the  individual  transforms  himself,  both  when 
he  thinks  and  when  he  acts."^ 

This  doctrine  of  "the  two  levels  of  human  existence,"  th-e 
unique  reality  of  the  community  and  its  importance  for  the  life 
of  the  individual,  is  made  use  of  by  Royce  and  Durkheim  in  some- 
what different  ways,  in  their  account  of  the  office  and  the  sig- 
nificance of  religion  in  social  experience.  For  Royce,  the  social 
meaning  of  religion  lies  in  its  ability  to  heal  an  inevitable  muti- 
lation and  discord  in  our  nature  which  civilization  increasingly 
involves.  This  discord  is  a  result  of  the  very  processes  which 
alone  make  civilization  possible.     The  higher  products  and  the 

1  Durkheim,  The  Elementary  Forms  of  the  Religious  Life,  translated  by  Swain, 
London,  1915,  p.  431. 

2  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  Vol.  I,  p.  203. 

'  Elementary  Forms  of  the  Religious  Life,  p.  16.  Durkheim  discusses  the  auto- 
nomy of  "collective  representations"  and  their  relation  to  individual  representa- 
tions in  an  earlier  article  in  Revue  de  Metaphysique  et  de  Morale,  1891,  p.  273. 


300  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

finer  achievements  of  man's  social  life  are  possible  only  when 
individuals  have  reached  a  correspondingly  high  level  of  moral 
self -consciousness  and  of  reflective  freedom.  "  My  moral  self- 
consciousness  is  bred  in  me  through  social  situations  that 
involve — not  necessarily  any  physical  conflict  with  my  fellows, 
— but,  in  general,  some  form  of  social  conflict, — conflict  such  as 
engenders  mutual  criticism."^  This  is  the  'moral  burden  of  the 
individual,'  this  discord  and  mutilation,  this  conflict  between 
his  increasing  self-consciousness  and  that  tightening  of  social 
bonds  which  civilization  brings  with  it.  Such  discord  and  inner 
conflict  increase  with  the  growth  in  the  complexity  of  life  and 
in  the  social  structures  of  civilization.  Social  progress  thus 
"breeds  men  who,  even  when  they  keep  the  peace,  are  inwardly 
enemies  one  of  another."^  There  is  a  clash  between  the  inner 
will,  the  self-assertion,  the  longing  for  freedom,  and  the  con- 
straints which  society  more  and  more  imposes.  It  is  this  situa- 
ation,  depicted  by  Royce  with  such  insight  and  such  skill,  which, 
within  the  tasks  of  man's  social  life  and  independently  of  all 
dogma,  increasingly  calls  for  salvation.  The  function  of  religion 
is  to  furnish  such  a  salvation.  It  can  come  about  only  through 
a  spiritual  transformation  inspired  by  the  love  for  a  community. 
This  is  the  religion  of  loyalty,  and  this  is  its  task  in  the  enterprise 
of  civilization.  The  truths  of  Christianity  may  all  be  stated  in 
terms  of  this  social  situation,  and  of  its  healing.  Such  is  the  way 
in  which  Royce,  in  The  Problem  of  Christianity  interprets  religion 
as  the  work  of  man's  social  consciousness,  as  the  function  of  the 
'beloved  community'  in  the  life  of  man. 

Let  us  turn  briefly  to  the  way  in  which  Durkheim  too  inter- 
prets religion  in  terms  of  social  experience.  He  has  set  this  forth 
at  greatest  length  in  his  study  of  primitive  religion.  Now  the 
one  fundamental  and  permanent  idea  in  religion  is  the  idea  of  the 
sacred.  "All  known  religious  beliefs,  whether  simple  or  complex, 
present  one  common  characteristic:  they  presuppose  a  classi- 
fication of  all  the  things,  real  and  ideal,  of  which  men  think, 
into  two  classes  or  opposed  groups,  generally  designated  by  two 

>  The  Problem  of  Chrislianity,  Vol.  I,  p.  139. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  143. 


No.  3.]  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  RELIGION.  30I 

distinct  terms  which  are  translated  well  enough  by  the  words 
profane  and  sacred.  This  division  of  the  world  into  two  domains, 
the  one  containing  all  that  is  sacred,  the  other  all  that  is  profane, 
is  the  distinctive  trait  of  religious  thought."^  Durkheim's  great 
service,  I  take  it,  to  social  psychology  lies  in  giving  us  a  natural 
history  of  this  'collective  representation'  of  the  sacred.  For 
his  main  thesis  is  that  society  is  the  only  reality  which  can  gener- 
ate this  idea.  It  is  the  community,  it  is  man's  social  experience 
which  is  "constantly  creating  sacred  things  out  of  ordinary  ones."^ 
Religion,  according  to  Durkheim,  is  just  this  community  experi- 
ence together  with  its  residue,  the  idea  of  the  sacred,  and  the  acts 
and  beliefs  which  center  around  that  idea.  His  formal  definition 
of  religion  is  this:  "A  religion  is  a  unified  system  of  beliefs  and 
practices  relative  to  sacred  things,  that  is  to  say,  things  set  apart 
and  forbidden — beliefs  and  practices  which  unite  into  one  single 
moral  community  called  a  church,  all  those  who  adhere  to  them."^ 
So  much  for  Durkheim's  central  thesis  in  his  Elementary  Forms 
of  the  Religious  Life.  But  this  is  primarily  a  thesis  concerning 
the  past,  concerning  the  beginnings  of  religion  in  man's  historical 
life.  What  of  the  function  and  the  fortunes  of  religion  within 
the  growth  of  civilization, — that,  which  for  Royce,  is  so  much  the 
essential  thing?  To  answer  this  we  need  to  turn  to  an  earlier 
book  of  Durkheim,  in  which  he  studies,  not  primarily  religion, 
but  the  process  and  the  causes  of  civilization.  In  his  De'la 
Division  du  Travail  Social,^  Durkheim  views  the  growth  of  civili- 
zation as  an  increase  of  the  division  of  labor.  It  is  a  process  of 
differentiation,  of  increasing  individualism.  So  much  is,  of 
course,  a  commonplace.  But  the  essential  and — to  some  extent 
at  least — novel  character  of  Durkheim's  essay  lies  in  his  belief 
that  the  division  of  labor,  instead  of  causing  the  bonds  of  social 
solidarity  to  dissove,  is  itself  the  source  of  a  new  form  of  such 
solidarity.  He  calls  it  "organic  solidarity"  in  contrast  with  the 
more  primitive  "mechanical  solidarity."     Mechanical  solidarity 

1  The  Elementary  Forms  of  Religious  Life,  p.  37. 
^  Ibid.,  p.  212. 
3  Ibid.,  p.  47. 
*  Paris,  1902. 


302  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

is  that  which  results  from  social  pressure  upon  individuals  who 
are  in  all  essential  respects  similar,  none  of  whom  has  as  yet 
attained  any  distinctive  and  individual  self-consciousness.  Such 
mechanical  solidarity  is  much  like  the  early  "blind  instinctive 
affection,"  the  "natural  love  of  individuals  for  communities," 
arising  "from  the  depths  of  our  still  unconscious  social  nature," 
which  Royce  contrasts  with  genuine  loyalty.^  In  his  Elementary 
Forms  of  the  Religious  Life,  Durkheim  shows  how  the  collective 
consciousness  of  such  a  primitive  society,  constituted  by  me- 
chanical solidarity,  generates  the  life  of  religion.  In  his  earlier 
book,  he  shows  how  such  primitive  mechanical  solidarity  is  being 
supplanted  more  and  more  by  organic  solidarity,  defined  by  the 
division  of  labor.  Does  it  not  follow  that,  for  Durkheim,  religion 
must  necessarily  play  a  constantly  decreasing  role  in  the  develop- 
ment of  civilization?  If  the  division  of  labor  is  itself  the  source 
of  social  solidarity,  of  a  new  and  essentially  non-religious  sort, 
then  there  is  no  such  problem  of  salvation  becoming  more  and 
more  insistent  as  civilization  progresses,  which  Royce  regards  as 
solved  only  through  a  religion  of  loyalty.  This  might  plausibly 
appear  to  be  a  fair  statement  of  the  relation  between  Royce's 
and  Durkheim's  interpretation  of  religion.  Durkheim  distinctly 
says,  for  instance,  that  the  r61e  of  our  "collective  consciousness 
diminishes  as  the  division  of  labor  progresses,"  and  accordingly 
that  "not  only  does  the  domain  of  religion  not  increase  along  with 
that  of  temporal  life,  and  in  the  same  measure,  but  it  is  more  and 
more  decreasing  ...  it  is  a  witness  that  there  is  a  constantly 
diminishing  number  of  collective  sentiments  and  beliefs  suffi- 
ciently collective  and  sufficiently  strong  to  take  on  a  religious 
form. "2  Moreover,  the  division  of  labor  which  Durkheim  views 
as  itself  the  source  of  an  organic  solidarity,  is  it  not  identical  with 
that  limitation  of  our  activity,  that  "narrowness  of  our  span  of 
consciousness,"  which  is,  for  Royce,  instead  of  a  source  of  strength 
"one  of  our  chief  human  sorrows?"' 

Yet,  thus  to  state  the  comparison  between  Royce  and  Durkheim 
is  not,  I  believe,  the  last  word.     That  distinction  which  for  Royce 

»  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  Vol.  I,  pp.  i8o,  i8i. 

s  De  la  Division  du  Travail  Social,  p.  356. 

'  Royce,  The  Sources  of  Religious  Insight,  p.  262. 


No.  3.]  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  RELIGION.  303 

is  so  important,  between  natural  group  emotion  and  a  moral 
and  religious  loyalty  runs  along  parallel  with  Durkheim's  dis- 
tinction between  mechanical  and  organic  solidarity.  That  is  to 
say,  a  level  of  social  organization  characterized  by  the  division 
of  labor  is  one  in  which  the  reality  of  the  community  is  more 
prominent  and  more  decisive;  it  is  one  in  which  the  community  is 
of  necessity  more  of  a  living  organic  being,  and  less  of  a  merely 
natural  aggregate.  In  a  regime  in  which  there  is  a  highly  de- 
veloped division  of  labor,  each  individual's  nature  will  appear, 
if  you  view  him  merely  as  an  individual,  vastly  mutilated;  how 
much  more  reason  there  is,  then,  to  complete  him,  to  discover 
the  real  substance  of  his  being,  to  create — or  to  discover — the 
beloved  community! 

It  is,  perhaps,  because  Durkheim  insists  upon  identifying 
religion  only  with  the  deposits  of  that  primitive  group  emotion 
which  characterizes  mechanical  solidarity,  that  he  declines  to 
see  any  religious  significance  in  the  accelerating  process  of  the 
division  of  labor  within  civilization.  With  Rousseau  and  with 
Lamennais,  most  'democratic'  interpretations  of  religion  in 
terms  of  our  social  experience  seek  for  religion  in  some  primitive 
sympathy,  some  species  of  universal  fraternity  which  is  only  a 
prolongation  of  nature,  in  something  on  the  level  of  Hume's 
impression  rather  than  the  idea  which  man  imputes  to  his  world 
through  his  own  activity.  An  organic  solidarity,  held  together 
by  the  division  of  labor,  does  not  come  of  itself.  It  implies 
activity  and  loyalty,  creation  of  and  devotion  to  the  community. 
Herein  lies  Durkheim's  essential  agreement  with  these  words  of 
Royce:  "For  the  true  Church  is  still  a  sort  of  ideal  challenge  to 
the  faithful,  rather  than  an  already  finished  institution, — a  call 
upon  men  for  a  heavenly  quest,  rather  than  a  present  possession 
of  humanity.  'Create  me,' — this  is  the  word  that  the  Church, 
viewed  as  an  idea,  addresses  to  mankind."^ 

And,  if  Durkheim  declines — as  he  does  in  his  earlier  book — to 
define  this  task  of  the  creation  of  organic  solidarity,  of  the 
transformation  of  a  natural  community  into  a  moral  community, 
in  religious  terms,  it  must  be  because  of  the  divergent  metaphysics 

1  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  Vol.  I,  p.  54. 


304  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

which  lie  behind  the  thought  of  Royce  and  Durkheim.  For 
positivism,  the  values  of  man's  social  experience  remain  some- 
thing isolated  from  the  total  background  of  human  experience; 
for  idealism,  there  is  some  continuity  between  social  experience 
and  its  environment,  between  the  '  internal '  and  the  '  external ' 
meaning  of  our  ideas.  And  religion  not  only  avows  that  man's 
social  experience  is  significant  and  creative  within  the  processes 
of  history  and  civilization,  but  that  it  is,  in  some  sense,  true  as 
well.  It  is  the  spokesman  for  idealism,  then,  who  can  claim  as 
religious  those  energies  and  ideas  upon  which  the  tasks  of  civiliza- 
tion must  in  the  last  analysis  rely. 

George  P.  Adams. 

The  University  of  California. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY. 

I  HAVE  been  asked  to  give  a  criticism  of  the  first  volume  of 
Professor  Royce's  The  Problem  of  Christianity  from  the  sys- 
tematic point  of  view.  I  am  not  quite  sure  what  this  cryptic 
phrase  means,  but  I  suppose  that  what  I  am  really  asked  to  do  is 
to  inquire  how  far  the  conception  of  Christianity  which  Professor 
Royce  gives  us  in  his  expository  volume  is  adequate  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  modern  theologian:  whether  it  includes  all 
that  he  would  wish  to  put  in  his  own  definition  of  Christianity, 
and  whether  it  combines  the  elements  it  includes  in  proper  pro- 
portion. 

Before  undertaking  this  task  I  should  like  to  make  three  pre- 
liminary remarks : 

1.  I  wish  to  express  the  satisfaction  which  we  all  feel  in  wel- 
coming Professor  Royce  to  this  circle  for  the  purpose  of  such  a 
discussion.  Professor  Royce  speaks  modestly  of  his  own  attain- 
ments as  a  theologian,  but  the  book  in  question  gives  evidence  of 
such  long-continued  and  sympathetic  thought  on  the  central 
problems  of  theology  that  we  feel  that  its  author  can  be  no- 
where more  at  home  than  in  just  such  a  circle  as  this. 

2.  I  should  like  to  raise  the  question  whether  Professor  Royce 
has  quite  accurately  defined  the  point  of  view  from  which  he 
approaches  his  subject  when  he  contrasts  his  own  position,  on  the 
one  hand,  with  that  of  all  Christian  theologians,  whether  liberal 
or  conservative;  and  on  the  other  hand,  with  those  students  of 
the  subject  whose  attitude  is  one  of  pure  indifference.  A  man 
who  wins  from  his  study  of  Christianity — a  study  conducted 
with  the  philosophic  detachment  which  characterizes  the  present 
book — the  conviction  that  in  Christianity  we  have  thus  far  at 
least  "man's  most  impressive  vision  of  salvation  and  his  prin- 
cipal glimpse  of  the  home  land  of  the  spirit," — a  man  who  believes 
that  the  central  ideas  of  the  Christian  religion  answer  the  deepest 
needs  of  humanity  and  record  its  highest  attainments  to  such  an 
extent  that  whatever  expression  they  may  receive  in  the  future 

305 


306  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW  [Vol.  XXV. 

"will  be  attended  with  the  knowledge  that  in  its  historical 
origins  the  religion  of  the  future  will  be  continuous  with  and 
dependent  upon  the  earliest  Christianity,  so  that  the  whole 
growth  and  vitality  of  the  religion  of  the  future  will  depend  upon 
its  harmony  with  the  Christian  spirit," — such  a  man  has  surely 
passed  the  dividing  line  which  separates  the  Christian  from  his 
critics  and  won  the  right  to  a  place  in  the  company  of  Christian 
theologians. 

3.  I  wish  to  express  my  satisfaction  at  the  clear  insight  ex- 
pressed by  our  author  in  the  very  phrasing  of  his  question,  that 
what  we  most  need  to-day  is  a  philosophy  of  history,  a  philosophy 
which  shall  interpret  the  individual  experiences  through  which 
the  race  from  time  to  time  has  passed,  and  the  typical  convictions 
to  which  it  has  given  expression  in  the  light  of  "the  lesson  that 
the  religious  history  of  the  race,  viewed  if  possible  as  a  connected 
whole,  has  taught  man."  Whether  we  can  succeed  in  such  an 
interpretation  may  be  arguable,  but  of  this  we  may  be  sure,  that 
if  we  lose  faith  in  the  possibility  of  such  an  interpretation,  we 
shall  empty  life  of  its  highest  meaning  and  leave  to  philosophy 
only  that  cataloguing  and  re-cataloguing  of  logical  concepts  in 
forms  admitting  of  equal  application  in  every  possible  world  to 
which  Bertrand  Russell  has  in  his  most  recent  utterance  tried 
to  confine  it. 

With  so  much  by  way  of  preface  let  me  proceed  at  once  to  the 
task  assigned  me.  I  shall  consider  in  order,  first,  what  Professor 
Royce  attempts  to  do;  secondly,  the  method  which  he  follows, 
and  thirdly,  the  conclusion  to  which  he  comes. 

I.  And  first  then  of  what  Professor  Royce  attempts  to  do. 
He  defines  his  task  himself  on  page  20  of  Volume  I  as  a  double 
one.  It  is  in  part  one  of  definition;  in  part  one  of  valuation. 
"Our  problem,"  he  writes," involves  some  attempt  to  find  out 
what  this  great  religion  most  essentially  is  and  means,  what  its 
most  permanent  and  indispensable  features  are.  Secondly,  our 
problem  is  the  problem  of  estimating  these  most  permanent  and 
indispensable  features  of  Christianity  in  the  light  of  what  we 
can  learn  of  the  lesson  that  the  religious  history  of  the  race,  viewed 
if  possible  as  a  connected  whole,  has  taught  man."     What  does 


No.  3.]  THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  307 

it  mean  to  be  a  Christian,  understanding  by  Christianity  what 
Christians  themselves  have  beheved  it  to  be?  That  is  the  first 
problem,  the  problem  of  definition.  And  the  second  grows  natur- 
ally out  of  it.  What  is  the  significance  of  this  Christian  faith? 
Does  it  approve  itself  to  us  to-day  as  tenable?  Can  the  modern 
man  "consistently  be  in  creed  a  Christian"?  This  is  the  problem 
of  valuation. 

So  stated  it  would  seem  on  the  face  of  it  that  we  were  dealing 
with  two  quite  different  questions.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  as 
Professor  Royce  well  sees,  they  cannot  be  separated.  How  am 
I  going  to  tell  what  belongs  to  Christianity?  What  is  its  essence 
as  distinct  from  its  transient  and  passing  features?  Clearly 
only  through  some  process  of  value  judgment  by  which  I  dis- 
criminate between  the  materials  which  history  presents  to  me  as 
more  or  less  significant  and  enduring.  Not  all  that  Christians 
have  regarded  as  Christian  belongs  to  Christianity,  but  only 
that  part  of  the  Christian  beliefs  and  experiences  which  maintain 
their  authority  in  spite  of  the  changes  of  the  changing  years. 
What  the  permanent  core  of  vital  truth  may  be,  each  must 
judge  for  himself,  and  his  judgment  may  differ  from  his  pre- 
decessors,— will  in  fact  differ  to  a  greater  or  less  degree.  In  his 
book  Professor  Royce  makes  his  contribution  to  this  trans-valu- 
ation of  values,  and  he  justifies  himself  in  so  doing  because  the- 
modern  man,  of  whom  he  is  the  spokesman,  is  not  simply  a 
newcomer  on  the  stage  of  history,  but  one  who  sums  up  in  himself 
all  the  previous  course  of  development,  one  therefore  who  looks 
upon  Christianity  not  as  an  outsider,  but  as  one  to  the  manor 
born. 

It  is  clear  that  in  the  very  definition  of  his  enterprise  our 
author  commits  himself  to  a  definite  philosophical  position,  an 
attitude  toward  life  and  especially  history,  which  finds  in  uni- 
versal a  significance  which  a  merely  nominalistic  and  sceptical 
metaphysics  denies.  For  Royce  this  is  a  rational  universe,  and 
history,  as  Lessing  taught,  the  education  of  the  human  race. 
He  believes  that  humanity,  taken  as  a  whole  "has  some  genuine 
and  significant  spiritual  unity  so  that  its  life  is  no  mere  flow  and 
strife  of  opinions,  but  includes  a  growth  in  genuine    insight" 


308  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

(p.  19).  I  for  one  believe  that  in  this  Professor  Royce  is  pro- 
foundly right,  and  what  I  shall  be  obliged  to  say  by  way  of  criti- 
cism of  his  treatment  concerns  not  what  he  tries  to  do,  but  the 
way  he  does  it. 

2.  My  first  difficulty  concerns  Professor  Royce's  method. 
What  he  proposed,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  definition  of  the  essence 
of  Christianity,  the  separation  from  the  vast  mass  of  material 
that  our  records  give  us,  of  the  permanent  and  significant  core. 
How  does  he  go  about  this  separation? 

He  does  not  tell  us.  That  is  our  first  embarrassment.  Certain 
negative  principles,  to  be  sure,  he  follows,  such  for  example  as  the 
rejection  of  the  dogmatic  method  which  bids  us  look  for  our 
definition  of  Christianity  to  the  official  records  and  decisions  of 
the  church.  Nor  is  he  any  better  satisfied  with  that  modern 
substitute  for  the  dogmatic  method  which  would  identify  Christi- 
anity with  the  teaching  of  its  founder  as  distinct  from  the  later 
additions  which  have  been  made  to  that  teaching  by  his  disciples. 
In  contrast  to  this  he  maintains  that  it  was  not  Jesus  alone,  but 
the  church  which  was  the  founder  of  Christianity,  and  that  the 
beliefs  about  Jesus,  which  we  find  in  the  writings  of  his  disciples, 
and  notably  of  men  like  Paul  and  John,  belong  of  right  among  our 
sources  and  should  determine  our  understanding  of  what  Christi- 
anity is. 

In  all  this,  it  need  not  be  said,  the  present  writer  heartily 
agrees  with  him.  No  attempt  to  understand  Christianity  which 
ignores  the  experience  of  Christians  about  Christ  can  be  historic- 
ally justified.  The  actual  living  religion  that  has  made  its  tri- 
umphant march  through  the  centuries  is  the  religion  of  the  living 
and  risen  Christ. 

My  difficulty  with  Professor  Royce  begins  with  his  account  of 
what  Christianity  means  to  the  church.  He  picks  out  three 
ideas  as  of  fundamental  importance  for  the  Christian  religion: 
the  idea  of  the  church,  or  the  beloved  community;  the  idea  of  sin, 
or  the  moral  burden  of  the  individual ;  the  idea  of  atonement,  or 
the  saving  deed  through  which  this  moral  burden  is  lifted  off. 
In  these  three  he  believes  that  the  genius  of  Christianity  may  be 
expressed  and  its  permanent  contribution  to  humanity  defined. 


No.  3.]  THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  309 

I  believe  with  all  my  heart  that  the  three  ideas  named  are  of 
fundamental  importance  for  the  Christian  religion,  and  I  think 
we  who  are  theologians  ex  professo  owe  to  Professor  Royce  a  debt 
of  gratitude  in  having  reestablished  them  in  the  place  of  central 
importance  from  which  some  contemporary  theologians  have  been 
tempted  to  dethrone  them.  But  it  is  not  easy  to  see  why  these 
three  should  have  been  singled  out  to  the  exclusion  of  others 
(e.  g.,  the  incarnation  and  the  deity  of  Christ),  which  hold  quite 
as  prominent  a  place  in  the  New  Testament,  and  have  maintained 
their  place  through  the  later  centuries  among  the  most  cherished 
and  sacred  convictions  of  Christians.  Why  should  one  be  taken 
and  the  other  left?  Surely  only  because  when  tested  by  the 
modern  man's  standard  of  value  they  have  been  tried  and  found 
wanting.  But  this  testing  Professor  Royce  nowhere  undertakes. 
They  are  condemned  without  a  trial.  The  case  against  them 
goes  by  default. 

tf  3.  And  this  leads  me  to  consider,  in  the  next  place,  Professor 
Royce's  positive  interpretation  of  the  Christian  religion.  That 
religion,  as  he  tells  us,  is  in  its  essence  a  religion  of  loyalty.  It  is 
loyalty  to  the  beloved  community  which  is  itself  the  community 
of  the  loyal.  This  community  deserves  allegiance  and  justifies 
our  hope  in  its  final  supremacy,  not  simply  because  it  is  the 
company  of  the  morally  perfect,  but  because  through  its  principle 
of  loyalty  it  makes  atonement  possible.  It  is  the  community' 
that  has  come  into  existence  through  a  deed  of  salvation  so 
original,  so  satisfying,  so  perfectly  adapted  to  the  social  situation 
as  to  make  the  impossible  possible,  the  unpardonable  sin  pardon- 
able, and  reconcile  the  traitor  himself  to  his  own  shame  as  the 
occasion  of  so  notable  and  admirable  an  achievement. 

In  all  this  there  is  much  that  is  admirable  upon  which  one 
would  like  to  dwell.  In  his  emphasis  upon  the  place  held  by  the 
church  as  the  company  of  the  loyal;  in  his  redefinition  of  love  in 
terms  of  loyalty;  in  his  psychological  account  of  the  genesis  of 
sin  as  due  to  the  inherent  contrast  between  the  principle  of  self 
assertion  and  the  claims  of  the  social  standard;  in  his  interpre- 
tation of  atonement  as  the  supreme  expression  of  the  work  of  the 
creative  artist  love — in  all  this  Professor  Royce  has  not  only 


310  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

given  utterance  to  vital  truths  with  prophetic  insight,  but  has, 
I  beUeve,  recovered  aspects  of  the  Christian  experience  which  for 
the  time  being  have  fallen  too  much  into  forgetfulness.  This 
is  especially  true  of  his  treatment  of  original  sin  and  of  the 
atonement. 

But  the  purpose  of  this  paper,  I  take  it,  is  not  so  much  to 
record  points  of  agreement — many  and  important  as  these  are, 
or  to  compliment  Professor  Royce  on  the  many  felicitous  phrases 
with  which  he  has  illuminated  the  various  phases  of  his  subjects, 
as  to  point  out  those  aspects  of  his  treatment  which  raise  ques- 
tions in  the  mind  of  his  reviewer,  in  the  hope  that  these  doubts 
may  be  resolved  in  the  discussion  that  follows. 

And  the  first  thing  which  I  miss  in  Professor  Royce's  treatment 
of  Christianity  as  a  religion  of  loyalty  is  any  adequate  definition 
of  the  object  which  calls  forth  loyalty.  That  there  must  be  such 
an  object  he  clearly  sees.  That  the  early  Christians  believed  that 
they  had  found  it  he  repeatedly  asserts,  but  in  the  transfer  of 
essential  ChrivStianity  from  its  ancient  to  its  modern  domicile 
one  cannot  help  having  the  suspicion  that  in  some  mysterious 
way  this  important  part  of  the  Christian's  household  furnishings 
has  been  dropped  by  the  way. 

There  are  three  different  answers  which  we  may  give  to  the 
question.  To  what  does  the  Christian  owe  allegiance?  We  may 
say,  he  owes  it  to  Jesus  Christ,  the  founder  of  the  Christian  com- 
munity; or  we  may  say  he  owes  it  to  the  church  which  Christ 
founded;  or  still  again,  to  the  unseen  God  who  reveals  himself  in 
and  through  both  as  the  ultimate  object  of  loyalty.  In  a  very  real 
sense  all  three  of  these  entered  into  the  experience  of  the  prim- 
itive Christians.  Professor  Royce  makes  place  only  for  the 
second,  or  at  least  so  fuses  it  with  the  first  and  the  third  that 
they  cannot  be  distinguished  from  it. 

In  this  he  claims  to  be  following  the  early  Christian  example, 
which  identifies  the  spirit  of  Christ  with  the  spirit  of  the  com- 
munity, and  both  with  the  spirit  of  God.  There  are,  he  reminds 
us,  two  distinct  meanings  which  the  word,  Christ,  has  to  the 
Christian.  In  the  first  place,  it  stands  for  the  historic  Jesus,  the 
human  individual  who  lived  and  taught  and  died  in  Palestine, 


No.  3.]  THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  3II 

the  giver  of  the  parables,  the  teacher  of  brotherhood,  the  master 
and  friend  whose  story  the  gospels  record.  But  in  the  second 
place,  it  stands  for  the  divine  being  who  became  incarnate  in 
Jesus  and  who  lives  on  as  the  inspiring  spirit  of  the  community 
he  founded.  Professor  Royce  is  quite  right  in  emphasizing  the 
fundamental  importance  of  the  second  of  these  aspects  of  the 
Christian  beHef  and  insisting  that  no  definition  of  Christianity 
can  be  adequate  which  leaves  it  out.  But  the  first  seems  to 
interest  him  little.  Whether  Jesus  was  what  he  claimed  to  be; 
whether  there  was  any  human  individual  deserving  the  con- 
fidence which  his  disciples  put  in  him;  whether  the  author  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  was  or  was  not  right  in  his  conviction  not  simply 
that  the  Word  was  made  flesh,  but  that  the  Word  was  made 
flesh  in  Jesus,  seems  to  Royce  of  small  importance.  It  is  not 
Jesus,  after  all,  who  was  the  founder  of  Christianity,  but  the 
church  which  saw  in  Jesus  that  Christ  who  was  at  the  same  time 
the  immanent  law  of  its  own  higher  life.  It  is  not  Jesus  then  to 
whom  the  Christian  is  loyal,  but  the  church,  or  what  comes  to 
to  the  same  thing,  the  spirit  who  is  at  the  same  time  the  spirit 
of  Jesus  and  the  spirit  of  the  church. 

But  this  is  only  to  push  the  question  one  step  further  back. 
What  is  this  church  to  which  the  Christian  is  to  be  loyal,  and 
what  is  the  evidence  that  it  is  worthy  of  devotion?  To  this 
question  the  early  Christians  gave  a  very  definite  answer.  It 
was  the  empirical  community  of  which  they  were  members,  the 
community  that  Jesus  had  founded  to  be  the  organ  of  his  spirit, 
and  the  evidence  that  it  deserved  this  loyalty  was  the  fact  that 
his  spirit  was  actually  present  in  its  midst  imparting  to  its  mem- 
bers spiritual  gifts  and  justifying  their  faith  in  their  ultimate 
conformity  to  his  image. 

But  for  Professor  Royce  this  early  judgment  was  mistaken. 
There  is  no  church  anywhere  to  be  found  which  deserves  the 
name  of  the  beloved  community.  There  is  only  the  idea  of  what 
such  a  church  must  be  if  it  is  to  deserve  our  loyalty.  "'Create 
me,'  that  is  the  word  which  the  church,  considered  as  an  idea, 
addresses  to  mankind  "  (p.  54). 

But  whence  is  the  dynamic  to  come  which  is  to  make  this 


312  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

creation  possible?  It  was  not  Jesus  who  created  the  church, 
we  are  told,  but  the  church  which  created  Christianity,  in- 
cluding our  picture  of  Jesus.  But  now  it  appears  that  the 
church  itself  is  in  need  of  a  creator.  Whence  is  the  needed 
help  to  come?  Who  is  to  create  the  church,  or,  since  the  idea  of 
the  church  is  already  in  existence,  whence  came  that  idea,  and 
what  is  its  promise  for  the  future? 

It  would  seem  natural  to  us  that  it  came  from  God.  God  is 
the  real  creator  of  the  church,  as  he  is  the  ultimate  explanation 
of  Christ;  He  is  the  unseen  Spirit  who  is  at  once  the  ideal  and 
the  dynamic  of  its  realization  in  history.  Here  at  least  would 
seem  to  be  the  unifying  concept  of  which  we  are  in  search. 

And  indeed  there  are  passages  in  The  Problem  of  Christianity 
which  seem  to  point  in  this  direction.  More  than  once  we 
find  the  author  identifying  the  spirit  of  Christ  with  the  church, 
and  both  with  God,  {e.  g.,  pp.  202,  409).  And  in  the  final  con- 
structive volume  the  synthesis  between  the  community  and  God 
is  complete.  The  church,  the  beloved  community,  the  company 
of  the  loyal  is  itself  God,  the  only  God  apparently  for  which 
Professor  Royce  has  room  in  his  re-definition  of  Christianity. 

But  is  this  really  an  adequate  account  of  what  God  means  to 
the  Christian?  What  we  need  in  our  God ;  what  the  early  Chris- 
tians found  in  theirs,  is  a  creator,  but  the  God  of  Professor  Royce 
is  still  to  be  created.  He  exists  in  idea  indeed,  as  the  beloved 
community  which  calls  forth  the  loyalty  of  all  the  loyal.  But 
he  exists  in  idea  only,  awaiting  his  realization  in  that  world  of 
the  concrete  and  the  individual  we  call  history. 

Whatever  this  conception  of  God  may  be,  it  is  surely  not 
Christian.  The  Christian  God  is  the  God  who  is  realizing  his 
will  in  history;  first  in  the  person  of  Jesus,  then  in  the  faithful 
who  have  come  under  the  spell  of  his  spirit.  He  is  a  God  whose 
nature  can  be  known,  in  part  no  doubt,  but  truly  so  far  as  known ; 
through  the  revelation  made  through  Jesus,  the  God  who  can 
be  described  as  love,  because  he  has  wrought  a  great  deed  of 
atonement,  and  who  because  he  is  love  and  demands  love  in 
others,  calls  forth  and  deserves  loyalty. 

My  criticism  of  Professor  Royce's  treatment  of  Christianity, 


No.  3.]  THE  PROBLEM  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  313 

then,  is  twofold:  first,  that  he  unduly  simplifies  Christianity  by 
identifying  three  conceptions  which,  however  closely  related  in 
Christian  experience,  must  ever  remain  distinct,  namely,  God, 
Christ,  the  church.  Secondly,  that  he  empties  loyalty  of  its 
highest  significance  by  treating  it  as  an  end  in  itself  irrespective 
of  the  object  which  calls  forth  loyalty.  (Cf.  especially  his 
treatment  of  the  unpardonable  sin).  It  is  true  that  loyalty  as 
Royce  defines  it  is  more  and  other  than  love,  but  it  is  also  true 
— and  this  is  a  distinct  tenet  of  Christianity — that  it  is  because 
Jesus  lived  and  inspired  love,  in  the  sense  in  which  Royce  dis- 
tinguishes it  from  loyalty,  that  he  deserves  loyalty.  Loyalty  in 
the  abstract  may  lead,  no  one  can  tell  whither,  to  militant  im- 
perialism as  well  as  to  Christian  self-sacrifice.  That  loyalty 
only  deserves  the  name  Christian  which  is  inspired  by  the  type 
of  ethics  which  finds  its  most  signal,  if  not  its  only  historic 
manifestation,  in  Jesus  Christ — the  ethics,  I  mean,  which  assigns 
to  the  individual  an  independent  worth  and  function  as  a  son  of 
God,  with  his  own  peculiar  place  and  responsibilities  in  the  divine 
family.  It  is  because  the  church,  however  imperfectly,  is  really 
trying  to  realize  that  kind  of  ideal,  and  for  that  reason  only, 
that  it  can  be  associated  with  Jesus  as  the  object  of  Christian 
loyalty. 

It  would  seem,  then,  that  in  spite  of  his  promise  Professor 
Royce  does  not  give  us  any  real  philosophy  of  history,  for  history 
means  progress  toward  an  ideal,  and  for  progress  Professor  Royce's 
treatment  of  Christianity  leaves  no  room.  An  ideal  indeed  he 
gives  us,  but  so  abstract  and  empty  of  content  that  it  can  be 
fitted  into  almost  every  conceivable  type  of  experience,  and  for 
that  reason  affords  us  no  standard  of  judgment  by  which  we  can 
measure  the  existing  conflicts  which  give  zest  and  pathos  to  the 
strifes  and  failures  of  the  real  world.  Why  this  should  be;  what 
relation  this  method  of  approach  has  to  the  type  of  philosophy 
of  which  Professor  Royce  is  so  distinguished  a  representative* 
is  a  question  which  would  carry  us  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
present  discussion  into  regions  which,  however  interesting  and 
fruitful,  do  not  primarily  concern  us  here. 

But  I  would  not  end  upon  a  note  of  criticism,  but  rather  with 


314  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

the  renewed  expression  of  the  debt  of  gratitude  which  I  person- 
ally, in  common  with  all  my  colleagues,  owe  to  Professor  Royce 
for  his  stimulating  and  searching  investigation  of  a  subject  matter 
with  which  we  are  so  intimately  concerned.  In  these  days  when 
so  many  are  defining  Christianity  in  terms  of  an  ethics  without 
religion,  it  is  well  to  be  reminded  of  those  deeper  and  more  meta- 
physical truths,  without  which  ethics  alone  would  lose  its  driving 
power. 

In  conclusion,  I  should  like  to  suggest  the  following  questions, 
the  answers  to  which  will  tend  to  clear  up  the  doubts  to  which  I 
have  ventured  to  give  voice: — 

1.  What  is  the  method  by  which  we  must  determine  what 
part  of  the  beliefs  of  a  historic  religion  like  Christianity  justify 
their  place  in  universal  religion? 

2.  What  is  the  relation  of  the  ideal  community  which  is  the 
object  of  loyalty  to  the  existing  institutions  of  society? 

3.  Where  in  the  modern  world  can  we  find  the  leadership  which 
justifies  loyalty? 

4.  In  what  sense  does  Professor  Royce  give  us  a  God  distinct 
enough  to  be  communed  with  and  good  enough  to  be  worshipped  ? 

Wm.  Adams  Brown. 

Union  Theological  Seminary. 


ROYCE'S   INTERPRETATION   OF  CHRISTIANITY. 

STUDENTS  of  theology,  whether  historical  theology  or  con- 
structive, have  reason  to  be  grateful  when  a  philosopher  of 
the  eminence  of  Professor  Royce  turns  his  attention  to  the 
Philosophy  of  Religion  as  his  most  vital  field  of  enquiry,  and  to 
the  history  and  significance  of  Christianity  as  the  most  essential 
problem  in  this  field.  Professor  Royce  himself  interprets  to  us 
his  title  The  Problem  of  Christianity  when  in  his  opening  chapter 
on  "The  Problem  and  the  Method"  he  declares  (p.  lo) :  "What- 
ever the  truth  of  religion  may  be,  the  office,  the  task,  the  need  of 
religion  are  the  most  important  of  the  needs,  the  tasks,  the  offices 
of  humanity,"  He  describes  himself  on  the  succeeding  page  as 
"one  to  whom  the  philosophy  of  religion,  if  there  is  to  be  a 
philosophy  of  religion  at  all,  must  include  in  its  task  the  office  of 
a  positive,  and  of  a  deeply  sympathetic  interpretation  of  the 
spirit  of  Christianity,  and  must  be  just  to  the  fact  that  the  Chris- 
tian religion  is,  thus  far  at  least,  man's  most  impressive  view  of 
salvation,  and  his  principal  glimpse  of  the  homeland  of  the  spirit." 

My  friend  and  fellow-theologian  Professor  Brown  has  the 
responsibility,  as  I  understand  the  matter,  of  determining  with 
what  success  Professor  Royce  in  his  second  volume,  bearing  the 
subtitle  The  Real  World  and  the  Christian  Ideas,  has  fulfilled 
this  task  of  assigning  to  Christianity  its  true  place  in  the  Phi- 
losophy of  Religion.  I  for  my  part  am  to  render  as  sincere  a 
verdict  as  I  can  upon  the  preceding  volume,  which  has  as  its 
subtitle  The  Christian  Doctrine  of  Life.  This  volume  in  fact 
contains  all  that  we  have  of  that  preliminary  survey  of  the  history 
and  psychology  of  religion  in  its  Christian  form  which  must 
precede  any  competent  interpretation  and  valuation  of  it. 

Were  I  to  commit  the  indiscretion  of  anticipating  the  verdict 
of  Professor  Brown,  by  giving  full  expression  to  my  sympathy 
for  the  Roycian  philosophy  of  Absolute  Voluntarism,  and  es- 
pecially for  the  doctrine  of  Loyalty  as  the  foundation  of  Ethics 
and  Religion,  and  were  I  thereafter  to  advance  my  criticism  of 

315 


3l6  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

this  exposition  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  and  of  Paul  as  summarizing 
religious  history  and  psychology  respectively,  I  might  place  Pro- 
fesor  Royce  in  the  unfortunate  predicament  of  that  eminent 
artist-literateur  who  was  understood  to  be  a  great  artist  among 
critics  of  literature,  and  a  great  literateur  among  critics  of  art. 
I  shall  not  commit  the  indiscretion.  Still  I  may  premise  that 
I  began  the  reading  of  The  Problem  of  Christianity  with  a  deep 
conviction  that  the  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  as  it  has  come  to  be 
called,  was  both  true  and  Christian  in  its  most  essential  features, 
and  that  I  concluded  my  reading  of  the  present  volumes  not  with 
admiration  alone,  but  with  a  deep  feeling  of  gratitude  for  the 
effort  of  a  great  constructive  philosopher  of  our  time  to  find  his 
philosophy — not  arbitrarily,  not  by  doing  violence  to  historic 
truth,  but  honestly  and  sincerely — in  the  teaching  of  Jesus  and 
of  Paul. 

The  late  eminent  colleague  of  Professor  Royce,  in  his  Varieties 
of  Religious  Experience,  has  made  perhaps  the  most  distinctive 
American  contribution  to  philosophy  in  the  field  of  the  psychology 
of  religion,  having  especially  in  view  Christianity  and  more  especi- 
ally still  the  psychology  of  Paul.  Theologians  surely  have  reason 
to  be  grateful  to  William  James.  Similarly  the  most  eminent 
ecclesiastical  historian  of  our  times  has  sought  to  answer  the 
question  What  is  Christianity?  by  a  survey  of  its  history. 
Harnack  will  not  be  reckoned  a  convert  to  the  religions geschicht- 
liche  Schule  because  he  applies  his  knowledge  of  church  history 
to  New  Testament  problems,  any  more  than  James  to  the  ex- 
ponents of  Paulinism  because  he  applies  his  knowledge  of  psy- 
chology to  the  conversion  of  Paul.  But  both  are  most  welcome 
in  the  field  just  because  they  bring  to  it  the  more  or  less  specialized 
judgment  of  an  expert  in  other  fields.  A  Blass,  a  Ramsay,  a 
Percy  Gardner,  a  Reitzenstein,  a  Norden,  a  Cumont — New 
Testament  philology  and  archaeology  are  not  unconscious  of 
their  debt  to  such  guests  as  these,  and  how  many  still  greater 
names  might  be  cited  from  the  domain  of  philosophy,  who  have 
made  Christian  theology  their  temporary  home! 

Such  guests  have  special  aptitudes  and  special  limitations. 
A  biblical  critic  need  not  be  in  entire  agreement  with  Harnack's 


No.  2.]    ROYCE'S  INTERPRETATION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.         317 

Beitrdge  nor  even  accept  Harnack's  idea  of  what  constitutes  the 
true  essence  of  the  religion  in  its  historic  development,  to  be 
appreciative  of  Das  Wesen  des  Christenthums .  For  my  own  part 
I  observe  with  satisfaction  Professor  Royce's  emphatic  dissent 
from  Harnack,  and  his  sympathy  with  Loisy,  the  exponent  of 
French  modernism,  in  the  conviction  that,  "the  Christian  religion 
always  has  been  and,  historically  speaking,  must  be,  not  simply 
a  religion  taught  by  any  man  to  any  company  of  disciples,  but 
always  also  a  religion  whose  sense  has  consisted,  at  least  in  part, 
in  the  interpretation  which  later  generations  gave  to  the  mission 
and  the  nature  of  the  founder."^  One  may  anticipate  more  from 
the  historical  survey  of  a  student  of  the  philosophy  of  religion 
when  his  conception  of  the  essence  of  Christianity  is  progressive 
and  dynamic,  than  from  the  ecclesiastical  historian  when  the 
point  of  view  taken  is  merely  static,  like  that  of  so-called  'nine- 
teenth century  liberalism.'  The  doctrine  of  the  progressive 
Christian  consciousness  as  the  'seat  of  authority  in  religion' 
was  not  an  exclusive  discovery  of  Newman,  nor  a  monopoly  of 
the  Roman  modernists.  We  who  count  ourselves  modernists 
in  a  wholly  suprasectarian  sense  may  well  be  glad  that  a  philoso- 
pher of  the  type  of  Professor  Royce  should  look  to  'the  higher 
social  religious  experience  of  mankind  "  rather  than  to  the  experi- 
ence of  individual  geniuses,  no  matter  how  eminent,  as  exhibiting 
'the  central  idea'  of  religion.  We  should  not,  however,  be  sur- 
prised at  his  taking  this  standpoint. 

Without  trenching  on  the  province  of  Professor  Brown  I  may 
therefore  express  at  all  events  my  hearty  sympathy  with  Professor 
Royce's  statement  of  his  problem,  and  with  the  viewpoint  he 
proposes.  His  'mode  of  approach,'  as  he  terms  it,  has  this  in 
common  with  the  apologists,  that  it  postulates  the  supreme 
effectiveness  of  Christianity  in  the  'endeavors  of  mankind  to 
bring  to  pass,  or  to  move  towards,  the  salvation  of  man,'  and 
aims  to   present   'a   sympathetic   philosophical   interpretation' 

^I,  p.  29.  Cf.  II,  p.  366,  and  Preface,  p.  xxi:  "  The  Pauline  communities  first  were 
conscious  of  the  essence  of  Christianity.  Consequently  those  are  right  who  have 
held,  what  the  'modernists'  of  the  Roman  Church  were  for  a  time  asserting  .  .  . 
that  the  Church,  rather  than  the  person  of  the  founder,  ought  to  be  viewed  as  the 
central  idea  of  Christianity." 


3l8  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

of  this  'effective'  religion.  On  the  other  hand  it  avoids  the 
most  objectionable  features  of  an  ex  parte  apologetic,  inasmuch 
as  the  interpreter  assumes  the  largest  liberty  to  treat  as  obsolete 
almost  indefinitely  extensive  domains  of  traditional  Christianity.^ 
Professor  Royce's  Christianity  is  that  of  the  Pauline  churches  as 
reflected  in  the  great  historical  Pauline  Epistles  of  practically 
undisputed  authenticity;  hence  he  has,  as  he  puts  it,  "no  legends 
to  defend  from  critical  attacks."^  Even  his  Paulinism  is  "not 
of  the  letter  which  killeth,  but  of  the  spirit  which  giveth  life." 
The  'genuine  modern  man'  to  whom  he  introduces  us  in  his 
closing  lectures,  as  the  one  for  whose  benefit  they  are  written,  is 
one  who  having  fully  accepted  Paul's  doctrine  in  its  exact  his- 
torical sense  is  magically  transported  down  the  ages  to  our  own 
time  to  learn,  without  contact  with  our  Christianity,  all  modern 
science,  history,  and  philosophy.  To  such  a  '  modernist '  Pauline 
teaching  must  in  large  degree  seem  obsolete.  The  contrast 
between  ephemeral  form  and  perennial  substance  would  assume 
to  him  its  acutest  phase.  He  would  be  equally  unable  to  deny 
the  real  historical  sense  of  the  teaching  of  the  first  century,  the 
historical  facts  of  the  intervening  time,  and  the  scientific  truths 
of  the  twentieth  century.  In  remaining  loyal  to  essential  Pauline 
Christianity,  such  a  '  modern '  would  resort  to  no  theory  of  alle- 
gory such  as  Philo's,  to  vindicate  the  infallibility  of  his  erstwhile 
teacher.  He  would  realize,  however,  that  in  the  application 
made  by  Jesus  and  Paul  of  their  own  great  religious  intuitions 
to  the  beliefs  and  conceptions  of  their  time  they  were  using  an 
unconscious  symbolism,  like  prophets  of  a  continuous  'social' 
consciousness  searching  what  manner  of  time  the  Spirit  which 
was  in  them  did  point  unto. 

It  is  the  function  of  the  philosophy  of  religion  to  translate  this 
unconscious  symbolism  of  the  past  into  modern  speech.  Myth, 
legend,  institution  and  observance,  are  the  modes  of  expression 
instinctively  seized  upon  by  the  intuitions  of  religious  genius 

I  Preface,  p.  xxvi.  "I  must  decline  to  follow  any  of  the  various  forms  of  tradi- 
tionally orthodox  dogma  or  theory  regarding  the  person  of  Christ.  Legends, 
doubtful  historical  hypotheses,  and  dogmas  leave  us,  in  this  field,  in  well-known, 
and,  to  my  mind,  simply  hopeless  perplexities." 

« II.  373- 


No.  3-]    ROYCE'S  INTERPRETATION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.         319 

before  philosophy  has  elaborated  its  dialectic.  The  translation 
must  be  made,  but  it  is  well  to  preserve  the  original;  and  before 
it  is  made  the  original  terms  must  be  understood  not  merely  in 
context,  but  in  perspective.  Here  the  history  and  the  psy- 
chology of  religion  must  do  their  part.  Criticism  must  effect 
its  unsparing  analysis  of  the  records,  and  trace  the  development 
of  ideas;  psychology  must  make  its  own  diagnosis  of  the  psychic 
experiences.  Only  when  this  process  is  complete  can  the  philo- 
sophy of  religion  give  its  reasoned  valuation  of  what  the  past 
has  handed  down.  This  it  is,  then,  which  will  be  naturally 
understood  in  philosophic  terminology  by  the  Problem  of 
Christianity.  The  words  which  Loescher  applied  to  the  fixa- 
tion of  the  canon  of  sacred  Scripture  may  be  extended  to  cover 
these  for  th-puttings  of  the  religious  instinct  of  the  race:  Christian- 
ity itself  came  into  being,  non  uno,  quod  dicunt,  ictu  ab 
hominibus,  sed  paulatim  a  Deo,  animorum  temporumgue  rectore. 

Criticism  of  Professor  Royce's  historical  and  psychological 
survey  of  the  Christian  consciousness  is  doubly  disarmed,  first 
by  his  modest  disclaimer  of  ability  "to  decide  problems  of  the 
comparative  history  of  religion,"  ^  and  secondly  by  the  frankness 
with  which  he  acknowledges  a  quasi-apologetic  aim.  It  is  quite 
important  to  realize  just  what  is  meant  by  this. 

Apologists  of  the  type  of  Hugh  Miller  and  of  my  own  revered 
teacher  of  geology  at  Yale,  James  Dwight  Dana,  are  quite  a 
well-known  type  to  us  of  the  older  generation.  Professor  Dana's 
class-room  interpretations  of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  still 
abide  in  my  memory,  and  these  and  their  like  call  forth  today  a 
kindly  smile  on  the  lips  of  the  modern  student,  whether  of 
Genesis  or  of  geology.  The  apologist's  idea  of  'defending' 
Scripture  was  so  naively  transparent,  so  wonderfully  innocent 
of  historical  perspective.  What  more  sublime  evidence  of 
inspiration  than  that  the  Pentateuchal  story  of  creation 
should  correspond  with  nineteenth  century  geology?  What 
loftier  ambition  for  Moses  than  to  be  a  teacher  of  'modern 
science'?  And  if  the  fruits  of  Moses's  scientific  teaching  were 
quite  unapparent  for  three  thousand  years,  until  what  he  had 

1  P.  339. 


320  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

been  vainly  attempting  to  make  known  was  independently  dis- 
covered, surely  the  corroboration  of  his  wonderful  knowledge 
was  more  than  compensation  for  his  wonderful  inability  to  convey 
it.  The  kind  of  apologetic  which  can  conceive  no  greater  glory 
for  Scripture  than  to  teach  the  apologist's  own  views  is  familiar 
since  the  day  Scripture  acquired  an  authority  which  made 
Scriptural  corroboration  a  convenience.  But  if  the  higher 
criticism  has  taught  us  anything  it  is  that  ideas  have  a  history, 
and  must  be  viewed  in  perspective.  So  recently  as  my  own 
seminary  days  I  believe  there  was  not  a  theological  school  in 
the  country  that  possessed  a  chair  of  Biblical  Theology,  the 
teaching  of  Biblical  ideas  in  their  historical  development.  Nowa- 
days we  think  a  school  of  theology  does  not  deserve  the  name 
where  biblical  doctrines  are  not  set  forth  from  the  historical 
point  of  view. 

Needless  to  say  Professor  Royce  does  not  treat  the  Bible  in 
the  fashion  of  Hugh  Miller  or  Guyot.  And  yet  it  is  to  be  recog- 
nized that  his  acknowledgment  that  he  "takes  his  stand  with  the 
apologists,  and  against  the  hostile  or  the  thoughtfully  indifferent 
critics  of  Christianity,"^  is  borne  out  by  the  character  and  con- 
tents of  the  book.  It  is  not  the  product  of  a  dispassionate  critical 
historian  of  religion,  aiming  only  at  the  proportionate  consider- 
ation of  all  factors  and  processes  in  the  field  of  study.  That 
work  of  critical  analysis  and  research  we  must  assume  to  have 
been  performed  to  the  extent  Professor  Royce's  other  occupations 
allowed  before  he  undertook  his  interpretation  of  Jesus  and  Paul. 
Professor  Royce  finds  a  great  deal  in  Paul  which  must  at  least 
be  acknowledged  to  be  not  apparent  on  the  surface.  Others 
must  pursue  a  similar  course  before  they  adopt  his  conclusions 
or  their  own.  In  the  present  work,  as  I  have  already  expressed 
it.  Professor  Royce  'goes  to  find'  the  religion  of  loyalty  in  Jesus 
and  Paul.  He  does  not  attempt  to  deal  with  all  Christian  doc- 
trines. He  chooses  three  which  impress  him  as  the  most  vital 
and  essential:  (i)  the  doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  or,  as  he 
expresses  it,  salvation  through  membership  in  the  beloved  com- 
munity;  (2)    the  doctrine  of  moral   inability,   or  original   sin; 

'I,  II. 


No.  3.]    ROYCE'S  INTERPRETATION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.         32 1 

(3)  the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement.  Not  a  historical  survey  of 
Christianity  as  a  whole  followed  by  a  valuation  of  it  constitutes 
Professor  Royce's  contribution,  but  a  'discussion  of  the  meaning 
and  truth  of  each  of  these  three  ideas '  which  to  his  mind  express 
its  essence.  Not  even  these  three  ideas  are  considered  in  their 
origin  and  mutual  relation.  Admittedly  the  second,  moral , 
inability,  or  the  doctrine  of  original  sin,  plays  no  part  whatever 
in  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  and  the  third,  the  Atonement,  is  by  most 
critical  students  of  biblical  theology  regarded  as  almost  or  quite 
equally  foreign  to  the  thought  of  Jesus.  Professor  Royce  thinks 
he  can  discover  hints  or  foregleams  of  this  in  "  the  parables."^  I 
must  confess  ignorance  of  what  parables  are  meant — unless  indeed 
Professor  Royce  includes  what  a  leading  New  Testament  scholar 
has  well  and  nobly  called  'the  last  and  greatest  of  the  parables,' 
the  never-to-be-forgotten  words,  '  This  is  my  body  which  is  given 
for  you.'  Here  we  may  indeed  find  a  point  of  departure  for 
the  Atonement  doctrine  of  the  Church.  But  I  imagine  that 
Professor  Royce  himself  would  hardly  attribute  to  Jesus  a  doc- 
trine of  the  forgiveness  of  sins  which  made  it  dependent  upon 
his  own  atoning  death.  I  find  it  very  difficult  to  imagine  any 
student  of  the  history  of  this  doctrine  treating  Professor  Royce's 
conception  of  it  as  reflecting  in  any  save  the  remotest  way  the 
mind  of  the  Master. 

All  this  does  not  trouble  Professor  Royce,  because  he  limits 
himself  to  'the  Christianity  of  the  Pauline  churches'  and  does 
not  greatly  care  to  interpret  it  genetically.  Such  study  as  he 
has  given  to  the  question  of  the  history  and  mutual  relation  of 
these  chosen  ideas  is  prior  to  the  present  work.  If  he  has  fol- 
lowed up  with  Tennant  and  our  own  Professor  Porter  the  ante- 
cedents of  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  moral  inability  and  original 
sin  in  the  rabbinic  theory  of  the  yetser  ha-ra'  he  says  nothing 
about  it,  because  it  is  a  mere  preliminary  to  his  subject.  If  he 
has  trodden  in  the  footsteps  of  some  of  the  many  scholarly  and 
critical  historians  of  the  doctrine  of  atonement  and  traced  it 
back  with  Dalman,  Oesterley,  and  even,  I  may  add,  Schechter, 
to  its  connection  with  the  Isaian  doctrine  of  the  Suffering  Ser- 

1  P.  240. 


322  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

vant, — if  he  has  examined  the  doctrine  traceable  in  the  Hellenistic 
period  of  Judaism  of  the  atonement  wrought  by  the  Maccabean 
martyrs  and  compared  it  with  that  of  the  Zachuth  Ahoth  of  the 
rabbis,  of  this  too  he  finds  it  needless  to  speak.  This  is  because 
his  'problem  of  Christianity'  is  not  exclusively,  perhaps  not 
primarily,  a  historical  problem  but  to  an  appreciable  degree 
'apologetic';  and  I  think  we  must  understand  the  word  to  mean 
as  here  employed  that  Professor  Royce  to  some  extent  has  gone 
to  Christianity,  more  especially  'the  Christianity  of  the  Pauline 
churches,'  to  find  his  own  philosophy  in  it.  Whether  the  dis- 
covery is  real  or  not  will  depend  upon  the  thoroughness  and 
impartiality  of  the  historico-critical  studies  which  appear  only 
by  implication.  If  his  volume  does  not  produce  the  unfavorable 
impression  of  the  typical  apologist  who  notoriously  finds  in  the 
Bible  just  what  he  carries  to  it,  this  may  be  because  of  the 
more  disinterestedly  critical  character  of  these  preliminary 
studies.  I  am  disposed  to  think  it  largely  is.  It  may  also  be, 
however,  to  some  extent  because  his  philosophy  of  loyalty  was 
Christian  to  begin  with. 

I  am  not  finding  fault  with  Professor  Royce's  book,  I  am  de- 
fending it.  It  does  not  pretend  to  be  a  critical  survey  of  the 
origin  and  development  of  the  Christian  faith,  and  we  have  no 
right  to  criticize  it  for  not  being  what  it  does  not  pretend  to  be. 
Professor  Royce  wisely  avails  himself  of  Harnack's  pregnant  dis- 
tinction between  'the  gospel  of  Jesus'  and  'the  gospel  about 
Jesus.'  Then  with  something  more  than  Loisy's  modernism  he 
plants  himself  firmly  on  the  principle  that  Christianity  is  what 
it  came  to  be,  regardless,  or  almost  regardless,  of  what  it  had 
been,  or  how  the  development  was  effected.  He  can  make,  there- 
fore, comparatively  short  work  of  his  historical  survey.  We 
have  the  Pauline  Epistles.  They  reflect  at  certain  angles  the 
three  vital  ideas  and  their  psychological  reaction.  What  need, 
then,  of  any  historical  Jesus?  If  the  purpose  be  merely  that  of 
finding  the  philosophy  of  loyalty  somewhere  in  the  beginnings 
of  this  most  'effective'  of  religions,  why  not  leap  at  once  in 
medias  res  about  the  sixth  decade,  regardless  of  whether  the 
Christianity  of  the  Pauline  churches  has  fact  or  fiction  as  its 


No.  3-]    ROYCE'S  INTERPRETATION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.         323 

foundation?  Why  not  dismiss  entirely  those  perplexing,  la- 
borious historical  problems  of  the  relation  of  the  Greek-Christian 
to  the  Jewish-Christian  churches,  of  Paul  to  Jesus,  of  Christian- 
ity as  a  universal  religion  of  individual  redemption,  to  Judaism 
as  a  national  religion  of  social  well-being? 

As  a  matter  of  fact  this  is  very  nearly  the  course  which  Professor 
Royce  pursues.  "This  book  (he  tells  us)  has  no  positive  thesis 
to  maintain  regarding  the  person  of  the  founder  of  Christianity. 
I  am  not  competent  to  settle  any  of  the  numerous  historical 
doubts  as  to  the  founder's  person,  and  as  to  the  details  of  his 
life.  The  thesis  of  this  book  is  that  the  essence  of  Christianity, 
as  the  Apostle  Paul  stated  that  essence,  depends  upon  regarding 
the  being  which  the  early  Christian  Church  believed  itself  to 
represent,  and  the  being  which  I  call,  in  this  book,  the  "Beloved 
Community,"  as  the  true  source  through  loyalty,  of  the  salva- 
tion of  man."^  Now  if  the  object  is  simply  to  find  the  philosophy 
of  loyalty  in  PauHnism,  then  to  be  sure  the  fictitious  Jesus  of  the 
mythical  idealists,  A.  Drews,  or  W.  B.  Smith,  will  serve  the 
purpose  quite  as  well.  Indeed  if  Van  Manen  or  Van  den  Berg 
van  Eysingha  gives  any  trouble  about  the  historicity  of  Paul, 
then  Paul  too  may  take  the  same  road.  Rome  in  the  third 
decade  of  the  second  century  will  do  just  as  well  as  Greece  in 
50-60  A.D.  for  the  origin  of  the  Epistles.  Questions  of  Judaism 
and  Hellenism  and  their  fusion  in  Christianity  are  really  academic 
if  our  'problem  of  Christianity'  is  not  an  attempt  to  assign  to 
this  most  effective  of  religions  exactly  its  true  position  in  the 
progress  of  the  religious  consciousness  of  humanity.  We  may 
deal  quite  lightly  with  that  great  transition  from  social  and  na- 
tional religious  ideals  to  ideals  of  personal  redemption,  the  transi- 
tion from  Jesus  to  Paul,  if  our  problem  is  only  to  find  the  Phi- 
losophy of  Loyalty  in  the  Pauline  Epistles.  If  on  the  contrary 
we  are  studying  the  transition  of  civilization  in  200  B.C.  to  200 
A.D.  from  national  religions  of  various  types  to  the  typical 
religion  of  personal  and  social  redemption,  we  have  a  more  con- 
siderable task.  It  all  depends  on  whether  we  are  trying  to 
connect  up  with  the  eternal  Spirit  of  Truth  whose  witness  is 

1  Preface,  p.  xxvi. 


324  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

world-wide  and  eternal,  or  only  with  the  spirit  of  the  Pauline 
churches. 

I  have  spoken  thus  far  only  of  the  second  respect  in  which 
Professor  Royce  disarms  our  criticism.  Pray  do  not  assume 
that  judgment  is  already  passed  if  I  ask  that  his  book  be  judged 
for  what  it  professes  to  be  and  not  for  what  it  frankly  acknowl- 
edges that  it  is  not.  Surely  the  candid  acknowledgment  that 
the  'problem  of  Christianity'  is  not  confronted  here  from  the 
strictly  impartial  standpoint  of  the  critical  historian  of  religion, 
but  more  or  less  in  the  interest  of  a  particular  philosophy,  may 
be  accepted  without  seeming  to  put  disparagement  upon  the 
book,  or  to  retract  the  encomiums  uttered  at  the  outset.  Let 
me  remind  you  that  I  have  not  said  that  the  author  dispensed 
with  that  critical  historical  analysis  and  research  which  alone 
can  qualify  anyone  to  define  'the  essence  of  Christianity'  even 
with  the  limitation  'as  the  Apostle  Paul  stated  that  essence.' 
I  have  only  said  that,  whatever  expectations  might  be  aroused 
by  the  title,  this  volume  does  not  contain  the  researches  in  ques- 
tion and  expressly  disclaims  the  effort  to  present  them.  They 
must  be  presupposed.  Our  judgment  of  it  from  this  point  of 
view  must  be  based  on  what  we  read  between  the  lines  rather 
than  in  the  lines  themselves.  Does  the  author  give  evidence  of  a 
historical  appreciation  of  Paulinism? 

Here  we  may  be  perhaps  a  little  less  ready  to  take  Professor 
Royce's  modest  disclaimers  an  pied  de  la  lettre  than  in  the  case 
of  his  acknowledgement  of  a  method  and  mode  of  approach 
which  are  perhaps  something  more,  at  all  events  something  else, 
than  purely  historical.  If  he  has  not  allowed  us  to  underestimate 
the  extent  of  his  study  of  Christian  origins  and  of  the  development 
of  Christian  ideas,  then  we  can  only  say  that  in  this  case  the  large- 
ness of  mind  and  the  critical  judgment  naturally  developed  by 
philosophical  studies  have  in  considerable  degree  supplied  the 
place  of  special  research. 

Professor  Royce,  as  we  have  seen,  makes  no  attempt  to  de- 
termine the  historical  relation  between  Jesus  and  Paul.  To  the 
question  which  he  assumes  to  be  put  by  some  "kindly  critic" 
whether  "the  whole  meaning  of  the  Christian  religion  does  not 


No.  3.]    ROYCE'S  INTERPRETATION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.         325 

center  in  the  founder,  in  his  life,  and  in  his  person,"  he  answers: 
"This  book  has  no  hypothesis  whatever  to  offer  as  to  how  the 
Christian  community  originated.  Personally  I  shall  never  hope, 
in  my  present  existence  to  know  anything  whatever  about  that 
origin,  beyond  the  barest  commonplaces.  The  historical  evi- 
dence at  hand  is  insufficient  to  tell  us  how  the  church  originated. 
The  legends  do  not  solve  the  problem.  I  have  a  right  to  decline, 
and  I  actually  decline  to  express  an  opinion  as  to  any  details 
about  the  person  and  life  of  the  founder.  For  such  an  opinion 
the  historical  evidences  are  lacking,  although  it  seems  to  me 
natural  to  suppose  that  the  sayings  and  the  parables  which 
tradition  attributed  to  the  founder  were  the  work  of  some  single 
author,  concerning  whose  life  we  probably  possess  some  actually 
correct  reports."^  The  Christianity  which  he  considers,  there- 
fore, is  simply  'the  Christianity  of  the  Pauline  churches.' 
In  view  of  this  limitation  the  selection  of  the  three  supreme  ideas 
of  these  churches  as  (i)  Salvation  through  membership  in  the 
Beloved  Community,  (2)  Moral  Inability,  (3)  Atonement,  is  to 
me  an  evidence  of  great  perspicacity  and  real  historical  appre- 
ciation, however  strange  the  phraseology  may  sound  in  our  ears, 
and  however  we  may  be  on  our  guard  against  a  choice  dictated 
by  other  motives  than  the  effort  to  attain  pure  historical  fact. 
The  fact  is,  Professor  Royce's  view  of  Christianity  is — I  will 
not  say  like  a  drawing  without  perspective,  but — like  a  photo- 
graph all  in  one  plane.  As  we  have  seen,  the  whole  emphasis 
of  critical  study  for  a  generation  of  historical  interpretation  has 
been  to  put  these  photographs  under  a  stereoscopic  lens  and  draw 
out  the  perspective.  He  disclaims  acquaintance  with  this 
research  and  yet  in  fundamental  points  coincides  with  it.  May 
I  for  a  moment  assume  the  task  which  might  properly  fall  to 
my  colleague  in  the  chair  of  Biblical  Theology,  Professor  Porter, 
and  apply  the  stereoscopic  lens  to  what  Professor  Royce  sets 
forth  as  the  essential  ideas  of  Pauline  Christianity? 

Of  the  three  ideas  named  we  are  probably  nearest  to  genuine 
Paulinism,  and  at  the  same  time  furthest  from  all  other  forms  of 
Christianity  both  in  the  generation  before  and  the  generations 

1  Preface,  p.  xxvi. 


326  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

which  followed  Paul,  in  the  doctrine  of  original  sin  or  moral 
inability.  If  there  is  anything  in  the  New  Testament  peculiarly 
personal  to  Paul,  based  in  its  origin  on  his  individual  religious 
experience,  not  derived  from  earlier  Christians  and  equally 
incapable  even  through  the  logic,  the  eloquence,  the  authority 
of  a  Paul  of  being  impressed  on  the  succeeding  generation,  it  was 
his  doctrine  of  the  law  as  the  strength  of  sin,  the  doctrine  which 
Professor  Royce  most  philosophically  develops  into  a  psychology 
of  the  moral  sense.  Yes,  if  primitive  Christianity  had  cared  for 
the  Data  of  Ethics  it  might  very  well  have  developed  a  theory 
from  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  and  if  sufficiently  modernized 
this  psychology  of  the  moral  sense  might  very  well  have  come  out 
in  the  philosophical  form  Professor  Royce  has  given  it.  As  a 
matter  of  historical  fact,  Romans  was  taken  to  be  as  a  whole 
what  in  part  it  really  was — merely  a  polemic  against  Mosaism. 
Average  Christianity  of  Paul's  time  had  only  a  doctrine  of  Re- 
pentance, in  which  'dead  works'  played  a  part  as  giving  rise 
to  self-righteousness.  It  had  no  theory  of  the  origin  of  conscience. 
The  Pauline  dialectic  was  very  real  to  Paul,  and  more  or  less 
effective  against  the  Judaizers.  Of  the  next  generation  it  is 
scarcely  too  much  to  say  with  a  learned  church  historian:  "No- 
body understood  Paul  but  Marcion,  and  he  misunderstood  him." 
There  is  much  to  be  said  for  taking  the  religious  experience  of 
Paul  as  the  basis  for  a  psychology  of  religion,  and  I  wish  to  ac- 
knowledge my  own  great  indebtedness  to  Professor  Royce  for 
his  philosophical  modernization  of  the  Pauline  'data  of  ethics.' 
I  fear,  however,  that  when  it  comes  to  ranking  the  doctrine  of 
original  sin  among  the  three  most  vital  tenets  of  Christianity  in 
the  Pauline  period  I  shall  have  to  be  classed  with  James  and  his 
individualistic  mode  of  approach.  Historically  speaking,  the 
doctrine  of  Christianity  in  the  Pauline  period  was  simply  the 
universal  need  of  Repentance.  Paul's  was  a  '  Variety  of  Religious 
Experience.' 

Of  the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  as  it  appears  in  the  philosophy 
of  loyalty  we  may  say  we  are  more  or  less  reminded  of  Paulinism, 
although  here  we  are  no  longer  on  peculiarly  Pauline  ground,  but 
are  dealing  with  an  idea  expressly  declared  by  Paul  to  be  part  of 


No.  3-]    ROYCE'S  INTERPRETATION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.         32? 

the  common  gospel,  antecedent  to  his  own  preaching,  an  idea 
completely  obliterated  from  the  Lucan  writings  and  almost  com- 
pletely from  Matthew  and  Mark.  As  I  have  intimated,  some- 
thing of  the  kind  is  traceable  far  back  in  the  history  of  Judaism, 
though  with  increasing  opposition  in  legalistic  circles.  Noah  is 
an  avTdXXajfxa  kv  Kaipco  opyijs  in  Ecclus.  44:  17,  the  blood  of 
the  Maccabean  martyrs  in  Second  and  Fourth  Maccabees  is  an 
expiation  {KaQapaiov)  for  the  sin  of  Israel,  their  life  a  vicarious 
offering  {avTl\l/vxov)  for  its  life.^  Paul  has  his  own  distinctive 
doctrine  of  the  KaTaWayrj,  but  fundamentally  he  does  not  depart 
from  the  more  primitive  view  that  it  is  accomplished  by  the 
real  intercession  of  an  actual  mediator  who  was  "raised  for  our 
justification"  and  who  in  the  visible  presence  of  God  "maketh 
intercession  for  us."^  Otherwise  "if  Christ  were  not  raised"  we 
should  be  "yet  in  our  sins."^  Translate  this  semi-mythological 
form  of  atonement  doctrine  into  a  philosophy  of  loyalty  if  you 
will,  with  consideration  of  the  irrevocableness  of  the  past,  the 
need  of  the  'traitor  to  loyalty'  to  forgive  himself,  and  the  like, 
all  of  which  may  be — to  psychological  experience — profoundly 
true;  but  do  not  let  us  lose  the  Apostle  Paul,  and  those  who 
before  him  preached  the  gospel  of  the  Suffering  Servant,  entirely 
out  of  sight  in  the  historical  background.  Nothing  would  in- 
terest me  more  than  to  go  into  the  question  of  the  relation  of  the 
Pauline  doctrines  of  Original  Sin  and  Atonement  to  the  common 
Christian  doctrines  of  Repentance  and  Faith  and  the  antecedents 
of  both  in  Judaism;  but  I  must  limit  myself  to  the  third  idea: 
Salvation  through  the  Church. 

As  an  interpretation  of  Paul's  doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God  I  am  afraid  the  "thesis  of  the  book"  that  "the  essence  of 
Christianity  as  the  Apostle  Paul  stated  that  essence,  depends 
upon  regarding  the  being  which  the  earlv  Christian  church  be- 
lieved itself,  and  the  being  which  I  call  in  this  book,  the  Beloved 
Community,  as  the  true  source,  through  loyalty,  of  the  salva- 

1 II  Mace.  7:  37  f.;  IV  Mace.  6:  29. 

*  Rom.  8:  34;  cf.  Heb.  9:  11-22  and  the  intercession  of  Enoch  (Eth.  En.  xiii-xv.) 
Noah,  Abraham,  Moses,  Daniel  and  Job  in  Jewish  literature  (Ezek.  14:  12-21). 
3 1  Cor.  15:  17. 


328  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

tion  of  man  "^  would  hardly  be  acceptable  to  the  Apostle  Paul 
himself.  An  'essence  of  Christianity'  from  which  the  person 
and  work  of  the  historic  Christ  disappear  entirely  would  be  apt 
to  draw  from  Paul  words  somewhat  like  the  following:  "There 
are  some  that  trouble  you,  and  would  pervert  the  gospel  of 
Christ.  ...  As  we  have  said  before,  so  say  I  now  again,  If 
any  man  preacheth  unto  you  any  gospel  other  than  that  which 
ye  received,  let  him  be  anathema."  Speaking  strictly  from  the 
historical  point  of  view,  and  never  relinquishing  that  stalwart 
independence  which  can  venture  to  differ  even  with  Paul,  I 
think  we  must  here  take  the  side  of  that  "distinguished  authority 
upon  Christology"  and  "kindly  critic"  whom  Professor  Royce 
cites  in  his  Preface,  who  continues  to  think  that  the  historic 
Jesus  had  much  to  do  with  Paul's  doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God. 

Paul  had  his  own  characteristically  enlarged  and  universalized 
doctrine  of  the  Kingdom.  He  could  not  have  been  an  Apostle 
to  the  Gentiles  if  he  had  not.  His  doctrine  is  not  only  tran- 
scendentalized  after  the  fashion  of  the  apocalyptic  writers  to 
include  "things  in  heaven  and  things  on  earth  and  things  under 
the  earth,"  "angels  and  principalities  and  powers,"  but  it  has 
taken  on  a  strong  tincture  of  Stoicism,  the  doctrine  of  the  cosmic 
organism  animated  by  the  divine  Spirit,  the  body  of  Christ, 
whereof  every  redeemed  soul  and  body  is  a  member  in  particular. 
It  is  the  great  merit  of  Professor  Royce's  book  that  it  gives  us  a 
philosophical  valuation  of  this  adaptation  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God  under  the  Pauline  mysticism.  Nevertheless 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  there  never  would  have  been  a 
Pauline  doctrine  of  the  Beloved  Community  in  mystical  union 
of  life  with  its  glorified  Head,  if  there  had  not  first  been  a  Jesus 
obedient  unto  death  in  the  preaching  and  service  of  that  Kingdom. 
We  may  go  further  and  declare  that  whatever  Hellenized  and 
universalized  form  the  doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  assumes  in  Paul, 
no  stretch  of  the  historical  imagination  of  which  I,  for  one,  am 
capable  can  ever  conceive  him  as  giving  assent  to  a  formula  where- 
in the  mystical  body  is  everything  and  the  Head  of  the  body  disap- 
pears from  the  plan  of  salvation  altogether. 

'  Preface,  p.  xxvi. 


No.  3-]    ROYCE'S  INTERPRETATION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.         329 

Stoic  pantheism  may  or  may  not  be  nearer  the  truth  than 
Jewish  monotheism.  That  is  for  the  philosophers  to  decide. 
We  historians  of  bibHcal  ideas  must  take  our  stand  upon  plain 
historic  fact.  Paul,  with  all  his  tincture  of  Hellenistic  ideas, 
was  and  remained  fundamentally  a  Jewish  theist.  Idealistic 
monism  may  or  may  not  be  nearer  the  truth  than  the  traditional 
type  of  Christianity  which  attaches  special  significance  to  the 
person  of  Jesus;  but  actually  Paul  was  not  an  ideahstic  monist. 
He  did  not  hold  with  Buddhism  'that  the  very  form  of  the 
individual  self  is  a  necessary  source  of  woe  and  of  wrong,'  and 
was  far  from  indifferent  to  the  character  and  career  of  the 
historic  Jesus.  On  the  contrary,  Paul  expresses  his  sense  of 
salvation  in  terms  of  mystical  union  with  a  very  definite  historical 
individual.  "I  have  been  crucified  with  Christ,  and  it  is  no 
longer  I  that  live,  but  Christ  that  liveth  in  me  .  .  .  the  Son  of 
God  who  loved  me,  and  gave  himself  up  for  me."^  Nor  did  he 
lose  his  own  individuality  in  this  mystic  union  with  the  Spirit 
of  God  in  Christ.  He  believed  that  he  was  working  out  his  own 
salvation,  and  working  with  fear  and  trembling  too,  even  while 
confident  that  God  was  working  in  him  even  to  will  as  well  as 
to  do.  He  held  with  the  orthodox  Pharisaism  of  his  time  which 
Josephus  calls  Stoic  that  'AH  things  are  foreordained  and  yet 
freedom  is  given.' 

Nevertheless  there  is  a  sense  in  which,  as  I  believe,  even  Paul 
might  have  endorsed  so  radical  an  utterance  as  this  of  Professor 
Royce's,  and  herein  I  think  we  are  all  debtors  to  him  as  an  inter- 
preter of  Paul's  doctrine  of  the  Kingdom.  "Not  through  imi- 
tating nor  yet  through  loving  any  mere  individual  human  being 
can  we  be  saved,  but  only  through  loyalty  to  the  Beloved  Com- 
munity."2  The  Lord  and  Christ,  by  loving  and  imitating  whom 
Paul  is  saved,  is  not  a  "mere  individual  human  being."  He  is 
preeminently  the  eternally  glorified  head  of  the  Beloved  Com- 
munity, and  it  is  just  because  he  is  no  longer  a  'mere  individual 
human  being,'  no  longer  'a  Christ  after  the  flesh'  that  Paul 
can  preach  salvation  in  the  name  of  Jesus  as  one  manifested  to 

1  Gal.  2:  20. 

2  Preface,  p.  xxv. 


330  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

be  the  Son  of  God  with  power  by  the  resurrection  from  the  dead. 
We  recognize  that  the  Christ  whom  Paul  proclaims  as  universal 
Lord,  Savior,  Deliverer  from  the  impending  wrath,  Son  and  Heir 
of  God,  is  a  very  different  being  from  the  mechanic  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  We  cannot  help  perceiving  that  even  the  features 
of  his  earthly  career,  as  Paul  depicts  them,  are  idealized  traits, 
more  distinctive  of  the  Sufifering  Servant  of  Deutero-Isaiah  than 
of  the  historical  Jesus,  and  we  recognize  here  a  tremendous  prob- 
lem, perhaps  the  very  greatest  the  historian  of  religion  can  con- 
front: How  was  it  possible  within  that  brief  period  of  Paul's 
own  lifetime  for  the  Jesus  of  history  to  become  the  Christ  of 
dogma? 

Professor  R.  H.  Charles  has  shed,  as  I  believe,  more  than  a 
little  light  on  this  great  question — more,  I  think,  than  he  himself 
realizes — by  the  observation  based  on  his  wide  studies  of  late 
Jewish  and  apocalyptic  literature,  that  all  the  many  titles  applied 
to  the  Messiah,  the  Saint,  the  Just  One,  the  Beloved,  the  Elect, 
the  Son,  and  the  like,  are  simply  the  individualized  form  of  the 
titles  which  primarily  were  applied  to  the  Beloved  Community. 
He  is  their  representative,  and  as  such  obtains  the  title  in  the 
singular,  which  was  first  applied  to  Israel  in  the  plural.  In 
other  words,  the  messianic  hope  does  not  begin  with  the  promise 
to  David :  "  Of  thy  seed  I  will  set  one  upon  thy  throne.  ...  I  will 
be  to  him  a  father  and  he  shall  be  my  son."  It  begins  with  the 
adoption  of  the  chosen  people:  "Say  unto  Pharaoh:  Israel  is 
my  son,  my  first  born;  let  my  son  go,  or  I  will  slay  thy  son,  thy 
first-born."  Jesus  is  to  Christians  the  Suffering  Servant  because 
it  is  the  function  of  the  people  of  God  to  suffer  that  it  may  bring 
redemption  and  the  knowledge  of  God  to  all  humanity.  Christ 
became  to  the  first  believers  the  Suffering  Servant-Son,  because 
his  career  had  incarnated  this  national  ideal  of  Israel  the  mis- 
sionary and  martyr  people.  Christianity — the  Christianity  of  the 
Pauline  churches — therefore  need  not  cease  to  be  a  religion  of 
loyalty  to  the  Beloved  Community  because  it  makes  salvation 
dependent  on  the  person  of  Christ,  rather  than  on  membership 
in  the  community  as  Professor  Royce  assumes.  It  does  not 
need  that  detachment  from  the  historic  ideals  of  Judaism  nor 


No.  3-]    ROYCE'S  INTERPRETATION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.         331 

from  the  individual  life  of  the  founder  which  Professor  Royce 
seems  to  think  essential,  because  this  historic  ideal  of  Israel  and 
this  typically  loyal  life  of  the  founder  are  precisely  what  give  it  a 
tangible  and  real  content,  instead  of  the  vague  generalities  of  the 
ancient  religions  of  personal  redemption  or  of  modern  idealistic 
monism. 

Unfortunately  it  is  precisely  at  this  point  that  Professor  Royce 
declines  even  to  consider  the  evidence,  not  venturing  to  hazard 
an  opinion  about  "the  origin  of  the  Church"  or  "the  person  and 
life  of  the  founder."  In  reality  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  saving 
loyalty  to  the  Beloved  Community  is  at  least  as  much  bound  up 
with  loyalty  to  this  glorified  Head  as  loyalty  to  the  Empire  in 
his  time  was  bound  up  with  loyalty  to  the  genius  of  Csesar.  We 
cannot  imagine  any  devotion  of  emperor  worship  in  ancient 
or  modern  times,  any  consecration  of  patriotism  ev^inced  in 
los^e  and  loyalty  to  the  symbolic  person  of  king  or  emperor, 
which  can  equal  the  Christian's  devotion  to  his  heavenly  Lord. 
He  who  makes  appeal  to  the  Christianity  of  the  Pauline  churches 
as  displaying  at  least  the  elements  of  a  philosophy  of  loyalty 
should  take  some  account,  it  seems  to  me,  of  this  tremendous 
fact;  for  it  is  by  no  means  confined  to  Paulinism,  but  everywhere 
the  fundamental  creed  of  the  Christian  is  the  same.  He  is  saved 
if  he  confesses  with  the  mouth  that  'Jesus  is  Lord,' and  believes 
in  his  heart  that  God  hath  raised  him  from  the  dead.  This  faith 
in  a  glorified  eternal  'Lord'  is  in  Paul's  time  the  one  distinctive 
badge  of  the  Christian,  the  very  hope  and  ground  of  his  salvation. 
His  citizenship  is  in  heaven,  because  his  life  is  hid  with  Christ  in 
God. 

It  is  not  the  fault,  certainly  not  wholly  the  fault,  of  the  guest 
in  the  domain  of  historical  theology  that  he  has  not  solved 
this  problem  in  the  history  of  religious  ideas,  which  yet  lies  so 
near  to  his  own  line  of  argument.  If  we  ourselves  have  not 
solved  it  we  cannot  expect  the  solution  from  one  who  only  pays 
us  a  passing  visit  from  the  domain  of  philosophy.  But  the  very 
intuitions  of  such  a  guest  should  inspire  us  to  new  research. 
Professor  Royce's  book,  as  I  have  said,  takes  but  little  account 
of  the  historical  method  of  biblical  interpretation.     It  can  hardly 


332  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

be  called  religions geschichtlich.  It  presents  what  it  takes  to  be 
the  dominant  ideas  of  the  Christianity  of  the  Pauline  churches 
and  presents  them  all  in  one  plane,  practically  without  perspec- 
tive. The  author  does  not  attempt  to  tell  us  how  the  Pauline 
idea  of  saving  membership  in  the  Beloved  Community  stands 
related  to  the  teaching  of  Judaism  and  of  Jesus  about  having 
part  in  the  Kingdom  of  God.  He  does  not  attempt  to  relate  the 
Pauline  doctrine  of  moral  inability  to  the  earlier  preaching  of 
repentance.  He  does  not  attempt  to  explain  the  doctrine  of 
the  Suffering  Servant,  nor  how  the  Atonement  doctrine  which  he 
elaborates  from  Paul  stands  connected  with  Jesus  and  'the 
last  and  greatest  of  the  parables.'  In  short,  he  has  not  done  our 
work  for  us.  It  is  for  us  students  of  the  history  of  biblical  ideas, 
and  through  them  of  the  history  of  religion,  to  solve  these  prob- 
lems; and  after  the  coolest,  most  dispassionate  critical  research 
to  say  whether  or  not  the  philosophy  of  loyalty  was  'preached 
beforehand'  in  the  gospel  of  Jesus  and  of  Paul. 

Professor  Royce,  as  I  have  said,  explicitly  declines  to  attempt 
an  answer  to  the  question  which  to  the  historical  critic  of  Chris- 
tology  must,  I  think,  appear  the  greatest  raised  by  his  book: 
How  could  the  Jesus  of  Synoptic  tradition  become  so  soon  the 
Christ  of  Paul?  It  seems  to  be  enough  for  Professor  Royce  to 
observe  that  he  did.  The  people's  rabbi,  the  prophet  and  healer 
of  Nazareth,  the  friend  of  publicans  and  sinners,  became  the 
center  and  focal  point  for  the  highest  human  loyalty  to  the  end 
of  time.  He  was  'declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with  power  by 
the  resurrection  from  the  dead.' 

Professor  Royce  hesitates  to  deal  with  'legends.'  Legends? 
I  have  no  more  to  do  with  legends  than  Professor  Royce.  I  will 
dismiss  them  with  the  most  radical  critic  that  you  can  name.  I 
am  not  asking  what  the  psychological  experiences  were  which 
we  call  the  resurrection  manifestations.  I  am  asking  why  they 
were.  Take  whatever  experiences  you  choose  to  posit  as  those 
which  actually  did  lead  to  the  confession  of  Christ  as  'Lord.' 
Why  were  they?  How  could  they  produce  the  most  'effective' 
religion  of  the  world's  history,  save  for  something  in  the  char- 
acter and  career  of  Jesus  the  Nazarene?     If,  as  we  have  reason 


No,  3.]    ROYCE'S  INTERPRETATION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.         333 

to  believe,  the  first  experience  leading  on  to  all  the  rest  was 
Peter's,  what  was  the  psychology  of  Peter?  Did  it  merely  so 
happen  that  the  Galilean  fisherman  and  his  associates,  and  the 
five  hundred  who  soon  joined  them,  were  all  ecstatics  and  vision- 
aries? Or  was  there  something  in  Jesus  which  fitted  him  for 
the  part  he  was  to  play  in  their  religious  experience? 

It  would  be  presuming  in  me  to  attempt  to  account  for  all. 
But  I  think  that  in  his  philosophical  definition  of  Christianity 
as  the  religion  of  loyalty,  whether  by  research  or  by  intuition, 
Professor  Royce  has  given  us  the  real  key  to  the  psychology  of 
the  resurrection  faith.  'Loyalty'  is  the  root-idea.  Only  he 
should  not  have  called  it  the  "Christianity  of  the  Pauline 
churches";  for  what  is  most  distinctive  in  it,  the  doctrine  of 
absolute  devotion  to  the  Kingdom,  is  the  doctrine  of  Jesus.  It  is 
the  point  in  which  the  gospel  'of  Jesus  and  the  gospel  'about' 
Jesus  coincide. 

Is  it  accident  only  that  Professor  Royce  in  one  of  his  rare 
attempts  to  define  the  gospel  'of'  Jesus  declares  it  to  have 
been  "a  religion  of  whole-heartedness"?^  That  is  the  very 
essence  of  the  matter.  That,  if  I  mistake  not,  is  the  key  to 
Jesus's  character  and  life,  and  the  explanation  of  that  new  form 
of  the  religion  of  loyalty  which  centers  upon  his  person.  The 
unqualified,  unreserved,  absolute  devotion  to  God  his  Father 
and  the  interests  of  God's  kingdom  laid  down  in  Jesus's  teaching, 
lived  out  to  the  uttermost  in  his  life,  made  imperishable  by  his 
death,  this  is  the  essence  of  the  religion  of  Jesus,  and  as  such 
becomes  'the  essence  of  Christianity.'  This  made  him  the 
incarnation  of  Israel's  religious  ideal.  This  made  his  exaltation 
in  the  faith  of  Peter  and  the  rest  to  the  role  of  eternal  Lord  and 
Christ  a  natural  and  reasonable  thing,  whereas  without  it  their 
faith  would  have  been  hypocrisy.  No  visions  or  apparitions 
could  have  made  it  seem  anything  else  to  sincere  and  religious- 
minded  Jews. 

Take,  I  ask  you,  the  last  public  teaching  of  Jesus  as  recorded 
in  the  earliest  of  the  Gospels.  Look  upon  it  not  as  a  precept  for 
others  but  as  the  key  to  his  own  life.     A  scribe,  a  teacher  of  the 

1  p.  229. 


334  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

law,  asks  him  (asks  him,  as  the  reply  assumes,  in  a  genuinely  sym- 
pathetic spirit) :  "Master,  what  is  the  great  commandment  of  the 
law?"  Is  there  a  way  to  sum  it  all  up?  Jesus  answered  him  with 
the  Shema\  the  Credo  of  Israel,  the  first  expression  of  whole- 
hearted loyalty  learned  by  every  Jewish  boy,  the  last  triumphant 
confession  of  every  martyr  to  its  faith:  "Jehovah  our  God  is 
one  Lord,  and  thou  shalt  love  Jehovah  thy  God  with  all  thy 
heart,  and  all  thy  soul  and  all  thy  strength."  This  is  the  first 
commandment  of  the  religion  of  loyalty.  And  the  second  is 
like  unto  it,  and  gives  direction  and  content  to  its  whole-hearted 
devotion:  Thou  shalt  serve  the  Beloved  Community.  "Thou 
shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  We  have  been  accustomed 
to  regard  this  'summary  of  the  law'  as  a  rule  formulated  by 
Jesus  for  the  conduct  of  others.  He  would  never  have  so  em- 
ployed it  if  it  had  not  first  constituted  the  principle  of  his  own 
living.  The  Shema'  is  for  the  Jew  the  supreme  expression  of  what 
he  calls  the  principle  of  'the  Unity,'  an  expression  not  merely 
of  the  unity  of  God,  but  also  of  the  unity  or  wholeness  of  devotion 
which  is  God's  due  from  man.  Since  God  is  one,  no  divided 
allegiance  can  be  acceptable  to  him.  In  such  a  spirit  of  unre- 
served, whole-hearted  devotion  to  God  and  his  kingdom,  Akiba, 
the  great  martyr  of  Israel  in  the  age  of  its  division  from  nascent 
Christianity,  breathed  his  last  breath  with  the  Shema'  upon  his 
lips  or,  as  the  expressive  Jewish  phrase  has  it,  "  taking  upon 
himself  the  yoke  of  the  kingdom  (i.  e.,  sovereignty)  of  God." 
Jesus,  as  we  have  seen,  finds  likewise  in  the  Shema'  the  full 
expression  of  man's  ideal  relation  to  God.  In  combination  with 
the  golden  rule  it  summarizes  for  him  religion  and  ethics  to- 
gether. His  life,  and  even  more  his  death,  proclaimed  this  un- 
divided fealty  as  the  essence  of  his  own  inner  life.  He  be- 
queathed to  the  church  as  a  blood-stained  token  '  the  yoke  of 
the  kingdom  of  God.'  Jesus,  then,  and  not  Paul,  is  the  true 
founder  of  the  religion  of  loyalty.  Because  in  his  life  and  in 
his  death  he  had  been  the  incarnation  of  this  principle,  he  could 
without  sense  of  strain  or  incongruity  be  'declared  to  be  the  Son 
of  God  with  power  by  the  resurrection  from  the  dead.' 

B.  W.  Bacon. 

Yale  Theological  Seminary. 


ERROR  AND  UNREALITY. 

"  I  "HE  problem  of  error  comprises  two  distinct  questions,  viz. : 
•^  (i)  what  is  the  nature  of  the  mental  process  when  we  err 
and  what  causes  lead  to  it,  and  (2)  what  reality,  what  status  in 
metaphysics  has  the  object  of  error,  the  illusory  thing?  The 
former  may  be  called  the  psychological  question,  the  latter  the 
metaphysical.  The  psychological  question  has  been  often 
enough  answered,  and  with  reasonable  unanimity;  the  meta- 
physical one  has  seldom  been  squarely  faced.  There  seems  to 
have  been  a  feeling  that  when  one  explains  how  error  arises  he  has 
thereby  assigned  the  status  of  the  erroneous  object.  That  this 
is  not  true,  a  moment's  consideration  shows.  For,  no  matter  how 
the  error  may  come  about,  the  illusory  object  is  equally  puzzling. 
It  is,  to  be  sure,  unreal ;  yet  on  the  other  hand,  it  cannot  be  unreal, 
because  we  are  really  aware  of  it.  If  we  are  ourselves  real  and 
really  have  a  certain  relation  to  an  object  it  is  hard  to  deny  that 
that  object  is  real.  The  object  is  effective,  makes  a  disturbance  in 
our  minds,  and  exhibits  unmistakable  evidence  of  its  presence 
there.  Hence  it  must  he.  In  short,  it  contains  a  paradox;  and 
that  is  what  occasions  the  metaphysical  problem. 

Now  this  paradox  has  long  been  admitted ;  and  therein  is  the 
greater  disgrace.  For  we  have  here  no  mere  matter  of  ignorance, 
where  we  may  excuse  ourselves  because  evidence  is  hard  to  get. 
There  lies  before  us  a  contradictio  in  adjecto,  a  fundamental  in- 
consistency which  should  long  ago  have  been  stamped  out. 
No  unreal  thing  can  possibly  be;  for  reality  means  being.  The 
statement  that  the  unreal  in  any  sense  is,  is  a  self-destructive 
one,  a  direct  breach  of  logic.  By  all  that  is  decent  in  metaphysics, 
there  ought  to  be  no  such  things  as  errors,  mere  appearances, 
or  other  forms  partaking  of  non-being.  As  evil  is  a  standing 
denial  of  the  goodness  of  God,  so  error  is  a  standing  witness  of 
the  unreality  of  the  real.  One  may  think  to  escape  the  problem 
of  evil  by  denying  God,  but  no  philosopher  dares  treat  reality 
in  that  way.     The  problem  of  error  he  has  no  means  of  avoiding. 

335 


336  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

But  until  he  solves  this  puzzle,  his  system  breaks  the  most  ele- 
mentary rules.  Let  it  be  brilliantly  set  forth,  full  of  information, 
even  practically  useful,  it  will  be  as  a  noble  countenance  be- 
smutted. 

Nor  does  the  removal  of  this  blemish  promise  much  in  the  way 
of  knowledge.  To  wash  one's  face  before  dining  may  be  neces- 
sary, but  it  affords  no  nourishment.  The  solution  of  the  problem 
of  error  is  only  the  clearing  away  of  a  perennial  stain ;  at  the  end 
we  shall  remain  unprofitable  servants.  Still,  ardently  as  we 
desire  to  obtain  positive  knowledge  of  the  plan  of  the  universe, 
we  cannot  in  honor  go  forward  until  this  menial  task  is  fin- 
ished. For  our  sins  we  are  compelled  to  labor  at  it.  Yet,  I 
venture  to  think,  we  shall  find  in  the  end  an  advantage;  if  not 
in  new  doctrines,  at  least  in  casting  off  certain  hampering  tradi- 
tions, and  in  understanding  more  clearly  the  essence  of  meta- 
physical inquiry. 

The  issue,  we  have  said,  has  seldom  been  thoroughly  treated. 
Let  us  then,  passing  in  review  the  chief  theories  of  error,  seek  to 
lay  bare  their  inadequacies,  as  a  basis  for  our  own  attempt  to 
solve  the  paradox. 

How  can  the  illusory  object  be  in  any  sense  real?  The  natural 
common-sense  answer  is:  'it  is  not  real  but  is  mental  or  sub- 
jective.' And  no  doubt  it  is  true  that  errors  are  subjective.  But 
this  is  not  sufficient  to  dispel  the  puzzle.  For  if  we  say  that  the 
mental  is  unreal,  then  we  must  admit  that  our  pains  are  unreal, 
and  our  pleasures,  our  efforts,  our  emotions;  and  how  can  there 
be  mental  life  at  all?  No,  we  cannot  say  without  qualification 
that  the  subjective  is  unreal.  Let  us  then  assert  that  it  is  real 
as  an  event  but  not  as  a  content.  Suppose  I  mistakenly  believe 
there  is  a  tortoise  on  my  writing-table.  Then  there  really  occurs 
a  conscious  process — my  belief — and  while  it  is  a  real  event,  the 
object  of  it,  the  tortoise  on  my  table,  is  not  something  contained 
in  that  event.  The  tortoise  on  my  table  is  not  a  member 
of  the  subjective  world,  a  psychical  entity.  If  he  were  so,  he 
would  be  real;  as  real  as  pain  or  any  other  subjective  thing.  He 
is  simply  the  object  of  my  mental  process,  of  my  belief.  But  the 
object  of  a  thought  is  not  part  of  or  in  the  thought  as  a  coin  is  in 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  337 

a  purse.     It  is  somehow  related  to  the  thought  but  not  of  the 
same  stuff  with  it.     It  belongs  to  the  world  of  non-existing  beings. 

Thus  the  common-sense  view  loses  its  naivete.  It  no  longer 
considers  the  illusory  object  subjective.  It  has  seen  that  sub- 
jective stuff  is  as  real  as  any  other  stuff;  and  that  therefore  if 
the  tortoise  on  the  table  is  not  to  be  real,  he  must  be  something 
neither  material  nor  mental.  He  must  be  a  citizen  of  a  third 
country,  the  realm  of  unreal  beings.  This  however  brings  us 
back  to  our  original  problem.  For  how  can  anything  unreal 
be?  The  'subjective'  device  has  thrown  no  light  on  that 
puzzle,  and  must  be  held  to  have  failed. 

But  not  so  fast!  We  spoke  of  the  tortoise  on  the  table  as  an 
illusory  object.  But  perhaps  we  put  the  matter  in  a  wrong 
perspective.  Perhaps  it  is  not  an  object  at  all.  It  may  be  quite 
incorrect  to  say  that  error  is  a  belief  in  an  unreal  object.  Is  it 
not  rather  the  case,  that  we  never  believe  in  an  object,  but  believe 
that  an  object  is  so-and-so?  In  short,  errors  are  not  false  objects,  - 
but  false  judgments.  We  spoke  as  if  an  idea  could  be  erroneous; 
but  surely  it  is  only  a  judgment  that  can  err.  There  is  no  such 
object  as  tortoise-on-my-table,  whether  in  the  real  or  mental  or 
unreal  world.  The  error  consists  in  the  mistaken  reference  of 
the  tortoise  to  my  table.  It  is  in  my  attribution  of  the  beast  to 
the  particular  environment  that  the  mistake  lies.  This  attribu- 
tion now  is  an  act  of  mine  and  no  property  of  the  tortoise,  and 
in  this  sense  the  error  is  subjective.  The  tortoise  is  real  as  a 
mental  content,  and  the  table  is  real  as  a  physical  body,  and  the 
error  is  my  act  of  uniting  or  relating  the  two.  Thus,  it  would  be 
alleged,  a  better  analysis  of  error  rehabilitates  the  common-sense 
view. 

What  then  is  this  act  of  attributing  a  predicate  to  a  subject? 
Is  it  just  a  mystery  of  the  mind,  not  further  reducible?  Now  in 
the  case  of  true  judgments,  the  predication  is  more  than  an  act 
of  a  mind;  it  is  objectively  valid.  What  'objectively  valid' 
means,  depends  upon  one's  metaphysical  system;  it  may  mean 
that  the  predication  corresponds  to  the  real  state  of  things,  or 
that  it  is  itself  objectively  real.  In  either  case,  however,  it  is 
more  than  a  mere  act;  the  subject  and  predicate  are  really  related 


338  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

as  our  act  relates  them.  And  in  false  judgments,  the  maker  of 
the  judgment  views  the  subject  and  predicate  as  thus  really 
related.  To  him  at  the  time  of  judging  the  judgment  is  not  an 
act:  his  state  of  mind  is  just  as  saturated  with  objective  reference 
as  if  he  were  correct.  When  I  believe  that  the  tortoise  is  on  my 
table,  I  think  reality  itself  contains  that  predication  or  what 
corresponds  to  it.  As  far  as  my  own  experience  is  concerned,  I 
apprehend  an  objective  situation  as  much  when  I  am  wrong  as 
when  I  am  right.  In  the  psychical  realm,  the  mere  fact  that  I 
seem  to  see  it  is  enough  to  make  me  see  it,  to  call  a  judgment  an 
act  only  is  an  inadequate  description.  It  is  an  act,  if  you  insist, 
but  an  act  in  which  reality,  or  what  purports  to  be  reality, 
becomes  our  object.  The  common-sense  solution  cannot  then 
escape  the  difficulty  by  refusing  to  admit  an  illusory  object. 
For  judgment  is  in  every  case  about  an  object:  no  less  with  errors 
than  with  truths. 

With  this  the  puzzle  returns.  Where  shall  we  put  the  precious 
tortoise?  He  is  really  the  object  of  my  judgment.  Or  if  you 
prefer,  we  can  say  that  his  being  on  the  table  is  the  object  of 
the  judgment:  'that  he  is  on  the  table'  is  the  object  of  my  belief. 
This  is  the  Objektiv,  as  Meinong  called  it,  of  the  judgment;  the 
content  or  object  which,  in  Brentano's  terms,  we  accept  or  ac- 
knowledge when  we  make  the  judgment.  But  it  matters  not 
whether  we  speak  of  the  object,  the  tortoise-on-the-table,  or 
the  Objektiv,  that-the-tortoise-is-on-the- table;  in  either  case  we 
have  something  which  forms  the  subject-matter  of  the  judgment. 
And  the  question  is,  what  status  in  reality  has  this  'unreal' 
entity?  If  we  call  it  a  mental  thing,  then  it  is  real;  if  we  say  it 
is  no  mental  thing,  we  must  devise  some  third  region,  some  sort 
of  home  for  wanderers,  which  is  designed  to  receive  these  non- 
existent beings. 

Nevertheless,  so  inveterate  are  the  prejudices  of  common 
sense,  that  the  former  alternative  will  probably  still  be  chosen. 
Let  us,  they  say,  give  up  the  notion  of  unreality.  The  tortoise 
in  question  is  mental,  and  is  quite  real ;  but  he  is  not  endowed  with 
physical  reality.  The  error,  we  may  be  told,  does  not  lie  in  his 
non-existence,  but  in  the  confusion  of  two  distinct  spheres  of 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  339 

reality.  Or,  to  speak  generally,  all  illusory  objects  are  real,  but 
they  are  not  the  particular  objects  we  judge  them  to  be.  In 
our  example,  there  is  a  real  tortoise  on  a  real  table,  but  that  table 
is  not  the  physical  table  in  the  space-world.  The  mistake  would 
consist  in  the  identification  of  the  mental  world  with  the  material 
world.  There  would  be,  on  this  view,  no  one  illusory  object — 
tortoise-on-my-table — but  two  real  objects — tortoise-on-table 
in  the  psychical  field,  and  table-without-tortoise  in  the  physical; 
and  it  is  the  attempt  to  identify  these  two  with  each  other,  that 
gives  rise  to  error.  Now  in  reply  to  these  statements  we  have 
only  to  recall  that  the  tortoise-on-the-table  which  we  erroneously 
believe  in,  is  ipso  facto  considered  to  be  a  material  being  on  a 
material  desk.  The  object  of  the  erroneous  judgment  is  not  a 
mental  tortoise,  but  a  tortoise  with  material  attributes  and  in  a 
certain  spatial  position.  You  may  distinguish  as  much  as  you 
please  between  the  beast  and  his  material  predicates,  but  that 
is  only  one  side  of  the  matter.  They  are  also  identical.  The 
tortoise  in  question  is  meant  to  be,  and  understood  to  be,  a 
material  entity.  He  may  be  as  subjective  as  you  wish,  but  in 
the  subjective  world  he  is  a  material  being.  And  it  is  just  this 
paradox  that  creates  the  puzzle.  Put  him  into  the  subjective 
world  and  his  reality  will  be  of  the  sort  that  world  gives  him. 
But  in  that  world,  viz.,  in  the  erroneous  judgment,  he  is  given 
material  reality.  Or  we  may  state  the  difficulty  in  another  way. 
Make  the  illusory  object  mental  if  you  will.  Then  the  error 
consists  in  the  identification  of  the  mental  with  the  physical 
reality.  In  which  world  is  now  the  identity  which  is  alleged  in 
that  identification?  If  in  the  subjective  world,  it  is  none  the 
less  real.  But  if  it  is  real,  then  there  is  no  error.  If  you  answer, 
it  is  real  subjectively  but  not  materially,  then  you  must  say  that 
the  error  consists  in  confusing  the  subjective  identification  with 
the  material  identification.  We  have  only  to  reply,  where  does 
this  confusion  reside?  If  subjective, it  is  real — and  soon  indefi- 
nitely. To  call  the  error  subjective  can  never  suffice  to  explain 
the  source  of  its  unreality.  And  indeed  this  might  be  seen  at 
the  outset.  The  notion  of  unreality  cannot  be  generated  out 
of  the  notion  of  diverse  realms  of  reality.  As  well  try  to  derive 
the  notion  of  a  horse  from  that  of  different  races  of  mankind. 


340  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

We  saw  above  that  the  illusory  objects  must  be  put  either  into 
the  psychical  realm  or  into  some  metaphysical  home  for  incur- 
ables. Such  a  home  has  been  founded  by  those  who  do  not 
favor  the  subjective  as  an  ultimate  category.  Different  bene- 
factors of  this  institution  have  given  it  different  names;  we  may 
instance  the  "unreal  subsistence"  of  Montague,  the  "heimatlose 
Gegenstande"  of  Meinong,  the  "neutral  being"  of  Holt.  What 
is  the  nature  of  this  region?  Does  it  possess  such  a  character  as 
to  show  us  how  the  unreal  can  yet  somehow  be? 

The  first  article  in  the  constitution  of  the  new  establishment 
must  be  "the  distinction  between  reality  and  being  or  sub- 
sistence."^ "The  universe  is  not  all  real"  says  Professor  Holt 
"but  the  universe  all  is."^  Thus  we  are  to  solve  the  paradox 
by  discriminating  between  reality  and  being.  What  then  is 
the  difference  between  them?  For  it  is  by  no  means  self-evident 
that  there  is  a  difference.  The  same  author  says,  "Is  it  not  evi- 
dent that  being  real  or  being  thought  or  being  anything  whatsoever 
is  both  a  more  complex  and  a  more  special  thing  than  merely 
being?  "^  Now  it  is  difficult  not  to  think  that  he  is  here  misled 
by  the  linguistic  form.  'To  be  real'  adds  an  adjective  to  the 
infinitive,  but  language  is  often  redundant.  If  we  argue  from 
linguistic  expression  to  meaning,  we  shall  have  to  grant  that  the 
Aristotelian  logic  is  not  valid  for  the  Semites,  Malays,  Chinese, 
and  others  who  use  a  differently  constructed  sentence  from  that 
of  the  Greeks.  But  the  following  reason  also  is  assigned:  "As 
to  being  real  ...  we  know  that  there  is  the  opposed  category 
of  being  unreal,'^  therefore  "Being  real  connotes  more  than 
being"  (p.  21).  Let  us  grant  this  point;  let  us  admit  that  there 
are  multitudes  of  things  that  are  unreal.  But  what  is  it  to  be 
unreal  rather  than  real  and  how  is  it  possible?  That  is  our  very 
problem.  No  definition  is  given,  no  light  is  thrown  on  the  para- 
dox. We  are  met  by  a  refutatio  ambulando,  but  the  matter  is 
not  explained.  The  home  for  incurables  seems  to  be  divided 
against  itself.     Is  it,  indeed,  anything  more  than  a  hell  which 

1  E.  B.  Holt,  The  New  Realism,  p.  358. 

«  Op.  cil.,  p.  360. 

'  Concept  of  Consciousness,  p.  21. 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  341 

the  metaphysician  constructs  for  the  purpose  of  receiving  the 
devils?  But  how  the  good  God  can  countenance  a  hell,  or  how 
reality  can  so  far  contradict  itself  as  to  become  unreal,  we  do  not 
understand. 

Professor  Holt  here  takes  the  bull  by  the  horns  and  declares 
that  the  paradox  need  not  be  solved.  Errors  are  contradictions, 
yes:  but  contradictions  may  be.  In  fact,  the  world  is  full  of 
them.  "Whenever  a  moving  body  strikes  another  and  is  stopped 
or  turned,  the  law  of  its  motion  is  contradicted  ...  all  phenomena 
of  interference  are  cases  of  contradiction.  ...  At  the  point  of 
interference  the  vibratory  motions  imparted  to  the  ether  or  to 
molecules  are  contradictory  to  one  another,  and  at  that  point 
the  wave-motion  ceases;  and  energy  is  said  to  have  assumed  the 
form  of  tension.  All  counterbalancings,  as  in  cantilevers  and 
Gothic  vaultings,  are  contradictory  forces  in  equilibrium.  All 
collisions  between  bodies,  all  interference  between  energies,  all 
processes  of  warming  and  cooling,  of  electrically  charging  and 
discharging,  of  starting  and  stopping,  of  combining  and  separat- 
ing, are  processes  of  which  one  undoes  the  other.  And  they 
cannot  be  defined  by  the  scientist  except  in  propositions  which 
manifestly  contradict  one  another.  All  nature  is  so  full  of  these 
mutually  negative  processes  that  we  are  moved  to  admiration 
when  a  few  forces  co-operate  long  enough  to  form  what  we  call 
an  organism;  and  even  then  decay  sets  in  forthwith.  We  call 
nature  everywhere  consistent,  and  yet  we  admit  that  life  is  a 
mystery  while  death  is  none :  it  is  none,  because  the  antagonism 
of  contradictory  forces  is  the  familiar  phenomenon,  while  co-oper- 
ation of  forces  is  relatively  infrequent."^  "Nature  is  a  seething 
chaos  of  contradiction"  (p.  276).  We  are  not  here  concerned  to 
deny  this.  To  be  sure,  these  words  present  a  picture  of  the 
universe  very  like  to  that  of  the  absolute  idealist,  of  whom  the 
above  writer  is  the  doughty  foe;  but  one  knows  that  extremes 
meet.  And  if  one  objects  to  the  'Absolute'  that  we  do  not 
understand  how  it  solves  the  dialectical  contradictions,  one  may 
equally  object  here  that  we  do  not  understand  how  nature  can 
be  real  while  it  is  so  self-destructive.     A  contradiction  is  a  con- 

1  Concept  of  Consciousness,  p.  275. 


342  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

tradiction,  whether  revealed  by  an  idealist  or  a  realist.  We 
cannot  be  at  peace  until  we  solve  it,  for  we  cannot  help  wishing 
to  solve  it.  It  is  no  satisfaction  to  an  inevitable  desire,  to  be 
told  we  ought  not  to  have  the  desire.  That  is  but  an  attempt  to 
put  a  good  face  upon  the  mind's  defeat.  Once  more,  then,  the 
problem  of  error  is  not  solved;  it  is  only  put  aside. 

But  there  is  open  a  quite  different  way  of  approach.  It  was 
the  illusory  object  that  made  the  trouble.  It  is  somehow  real, 
and  yet  it  is  not.  And  whether  we  call  it  real  or  mere  being 
without  reality  it  is  equally  contradictory;  unreal  being  is  a 
contradiction  in  terms.  Now  let  us  have  a  change  of  venue. 
Let  us  drop  the  static  point  of  view;  let  us  not  speak  of  the  illusory 
object,  as  if  it  were  a  rigid  entity.  Remember  that  objects  are 
but  stages  in  the  stream  of  events;  adopt,  in  short,  a  dynamic  or 
functional  point  of  view.  Error  now  appears  to  be,  not  a  static 
beholding  of  an  unreal  thing,  but  maladjustment.  "Any  idea," 
said  James,  "that  helps  us  to  deal,  whether  practically  or  intel- 
lectually, with  either  the  reality  or  its  belongings,  that  doesn't 
entangle  our  progress  in  frustrations,  thactfits,  in  fact,  and  adapts 
our  life  to  the  reality's  whole  setting,  .  .  .  will  hold  true  of  that 
reality."^  And  by  implication,  an  idea,  or  judgment,  which 
works  against  our  adaptation  to  the  reality,  will  be  erroneous. 
Surely  there  is  no  contradiction  here,  for  there  is  no  entity  which 
is  unreal.  Error  is  failure:  a  real  process,  as  real,  unfortunately, 
as  the  success  which  constitutes  truth. 

What  then  is  the  nature  of  this  process?  Define  the  erroneous 
idea  in  functional  terms,  if  you  prefer;  let  it  be  a  plan  of  action,  or 
a  tentative  reaction  upon  a  part  of  the  environment.  Still  it  is  a 
conscious  process.  It  differs  from  the  incipient  reaction  of  the 
coiled  spring  in  that  it  entails  some  sort  of  prevision  of  the  anti- 
cipated act.  If  I  plan  to  reach  out  and  cut  off  the  head  of  the 
tortoise  as  an  intruder  upon  my  table,  my  intention  cannot  be 
fulfilled;  but  my  purpose  to  do  this  is  more  than  the  tightening  of 
my  muscles  and  whipping  the  knife  out  of  my  pocket.  It  is 
the  distinction  of  consciousness  that  it  reaches  forward  into  the 
future  as  well  as  backward  into  the  past,  and  a  plan  of  action 

» Pragmatism,  p.  213. 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  343 

is  a  case  of  the  forward-reaching.  The  person  who  entertains 
the  plan  has  before  his  mind  a  deed  which  is  not  yet  real,  and  if 
he  is  in  error,  never  can  be  real.  As  we  commonly  say,  he  con- 
templates the  deed.  He  sees  it  in  his  mind's  eye.  If  it  can  be 
realized,  there  is  no  contradiction;  if  it  cannot  be  realized,  he  is 
contemplating  an  impossible  and  therefore  unreal  object.  It 
matters  nothing  that  the  object  is  his  own  act  rather  than  an 
external  thing;  it  is  equally  contradictory.  We  find  that  the 
paradox  returns  upon  us  as  before,  for  we  have  only  translated 
the  whole  thing  into  another  language — the  language  of  process 
and  deed.  But  which  is  more  unintelligible:  to  contemplate  an 
impossible  deed  or  to  be  aware  of  a  non-existent  thing? 

We  are  not  impugning  the  correctness  of  the  functional  theory. 
It  is,  we  beHeve,  in  many  ways  the  best  account  yet  given  of 
truth  and  error:  it  is  positive,  specific,  and  offers  a  verifiable 
criterion  of  each.  But  it  does  not,  we  submit,  go  deep  enough 
to  remove  the  inconsistency  of  an  impossible  performance,  of  an 
unreal  reality. 

No ;  there  is  no  way  of  understanding  errors  so  long  as  reality 
contradicts  unreality.  Well  then,  let  us  make  a  last  stand  and 
deny  that  these  two  are  hostile.  Let  us  say  that  reality  admits 
of  unreality,  as  Hght  admits  shadows;  yes,  that  each  interpene- 
trates and  constitutes  the  other.  This  is  the  way  of  absolute 
idealism.  Every  finite  object  is  to  a  certain  extent  unreal,  each 
in  its  own  degree.  The  Whole  alone  is  real ;  but  being  the  whole, 
it  includes  all  the  parts,  and  among  them,  our  errors.  "The 
Absolute  has  without  subtraction  all  those  qualities,  and  it  has 
every  arrangement  which  we  seem  to  confer  upon  it  by  our  mere 
mistake."^  Now  suppose  we  admit  the  main  theses  of  this  view. 
Suppose  we  agree  that  science  gives  only  relative  truth,  that 
sense-perception  is  not  absolute  knowledge,  etc.  Still  what  we 
commonly  call  error  is  on  a  different  footing  from  scientific 
knowledge  or  sense-perception.  That  the  planets  travel  in 
elliptical  orbits  may  not  be  absolute  truth  and  may  contain 
some  taint  of  metaphysical  error,  but  it  is  not  at  all  like  the 
proposition   that   planets  travel   in  straight   lines.     That   is  a 

1  Appearance  and  Reality,  3d  ed.,  p.  192. 


344  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

scientific  error.  And  my  perception  of  the  tortoise  on  my  table 
is  a  perceptual  error.  In  these  cases  it  is  not  merely  the  parti- 
ality, the  finiteness,  of  my  knowledge  that  renders  it  false,  but 
the  positive  attribution  of  a  particular  predicate  to  a  particular 
subject  which  contradicts  it.  Error  is  not  merely  partial 
knowledge  or  ignorance  but  the  appearance  of  something  which 
is  not  even  present  as  a  part  of  the  world.  Taking  a  broader 
point  of  view  does  not  lead  to  its  inclusion,  its  metaphysical 
rescue,  but  to  its  rejection.  As  Mr.  Bradley  says,  "the  problem 
of  error  cannot  be  solved  by  an  enlarged  scheme  of  relations."^ 
And  Mr.  Bosanquet  makes  the  same  point:  "Now  in  'factual 
error'  there  is,  in  addition  to  such  abstraction,  hostility,  con- 
tradiction by  its  conditions,  from  which  abstraction  has  been 
made."^  Absolute  idealism  is  thus  confronted  not  merely  by 
appearance,  or  what  we  may  call  metaphysical  unreality,  but 
by  a  very  special  sort  of  appearance,  or  factual  error.  We  can, 
in  a  way,  understand  that  a  broader  point  of  view  will  solve  the 
contradictions  of  the  former.  To  be  sure,  as  Mr.  Bradley  him- 
self urges,  we  cannot  understand  it  in  detail,  but  we  can  see  in  a 
general  way  how  it  is  possible  and  necessar3^  But  as  regards 
factual  error,  which  is  our  own  present  problem,  we  cannot  see 
even  in  a  general  way  how  it  can  be  considered  real.  It  must  of 
course  be  real,  but  it  is  impossible  to  see  how  it  can  be.  The 
tortoise  on  my  table  must  in  some  mysterious  way  both  be  and 
not  be.  We  may  grant  that  the  absolutist  proves  that  this 
opposition  is  in  the  Absolute  necessarily  solved.  We  may  assent 
to  his  words  when  he  says  "The  one-sided  emphasis  of  error,  its 
isolation  as  positive  and  as  not  dissoluble  in  a  wider  connection — 
this  again  will  contribute,  we  know  not  how,  to  the  harmony  of 
the  Absolute."^  But  inasmuch  as  "we  know  not  how"  we  are 
no  better  off  than  when  we  started.  The  paradox  of  a  non- 
existent existence  remains.  Of  course,  if  this  were  only  a  case 
of  ignorance  on  our  part,  it  would  be  tolerable  enough,  for  we 
could  hope  for  added  knowledge.     But — to  repeat  what  we  said 

1  op.  cit.,  p.  195. 

*  Logic,  2d  ed.,  I,  p.  383  footnote. 

•  Ibid.,  p.  195. 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  345 

earlier — it  is  a  flat  contradiction.  It  is  to  the  metaphysician's 
world  what  sin  is  to  the  moralist's;  it  is  something  which  by  all 
the  rules  of  the  game  ought  not  to  be. 

We  believe,  then,  that  the  metaphysical  problem  of  error  is 
as  yet  unsolved ;  and  that  being  so,  it  becomes  our  duty  to  attempt 
its  solution.  Why  did  the  above  answers  seem  to  fail?  Because 
they  were  confronted  with  two  mutually  destructive  attributes: 
real  and  unreal.  The  shallower  views  tried  to  hold  the  com- 
batants apart  by  putting  them  into  different  realms — the  sub- 
jective and  objective;  the  deeper  views  saw  the  futility  of  this, 
and  allowed  them  to  fight,  but  were  fain  to  extract  a  degree  of 
comfort  from  the  spectacle.  And  in  the  end  no  one  has  made 
peace  between  them.  It  appears  that  there  is  only  one  resource 
remaining.  One  of  the  contestants  must  be  slain,  dissolved, 
analyzed  away.  As  this  cannot  be  the  category  of  the  real,  it 
will  have  to  be  that  of  the  unreal.  If  we  could  believe  that  there 
are  no  unreal  things,  the  contradiction  would  be  solved.  This 
is  indeed  a  heroic  remedy;  for  it  is  to  grant  reality  to  everything, 
to  the  content  of  wildest  imaginations,  of  the  most  insane  delu- 
sions. Can  we  possibly  carry  through  so  desperate  a  programme  ? 
Let  us  see  how  it  works  out. 

Our  first  assertion  shall  be,  that  there  is  nothing  unreal;  or 
better,  everything  is  real.  Everything  then  which  is  an  object 
of  thought  is  real.  Anybody  will  grant  that  perhaps  it  is  real 
in  the  subjective  world,  or  in  some  'subsistent'  world;  but  we 
ask,  how  can  those  worlds  be  unreal?  They  cannot;  nothing 
can  be  unreal,  for  that  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  To  be  an 
object  of  thought  is  to  be  related  in  a  certain  definite  manner  to 
some  mind;  and  if  the  mind  is  real  and  the  relation  is  real  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  the  term  which  is  related  can  fail  to  be  real. 
A  real  man  cannot  really  hang  from  a  non-existent  rope.  What 
then  is  the  logical  consequence?  Why,  that  every  illusory  object 
is  real — for  it  is  the  object  of  thought  when  one  errs.  Then  the 
tortoise  on  my  table  is  after  all  real.  But  further  he  is  real  not 
merely  in  the  subjective  world,  but  in  the  physical  world.  For 
it  is  of  him  as  being  physically  real  that  I  think,  when  I  make  the 
error.     The  very  gist  of  the  error  is  that  he  is  a  physical  tortoise 


346  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

on  my  physical  table.  But  it  seems  as  if  we  had  gone  too  far; 
for  wherein  is  any  error  left?  Now  comes  our  second  or  counter- 
assertion,  without  which  the  first  would  be  futile.  The  error 
consists,  not  in  my  belief  in  the  tortoise,  but  in  the  denial  which, 
in  my  mind,  goes  with  that  belief.  I  take  the  tortoise's  presence 
to  exclude  the  presence  of  whatever  else  is  there — be  it  a  book, 
a  pencil,  or  just  air.  It  is  in  the  denial  of  that  fact  or  object 
that  the  sting  of  error  lies.  Error  entails  denial  of  some  fact; 
it  is  a  belief  in  the  non-existence  of  something.  This  kind  of  a 
being,  a  negation,  and  this  alone,  can  without  inconsistency  be 
unreal;  for  it  is  not,  properly  speaking,  an  entity,  but  a  case  of 
non-entity.  And  with  this,  we  suggest,  the  paradox  of  error  is 
solved. 

Now  we  should  here  prefer  to  illustrate  and  test  our  view  em- 
pirically; but  the  chief  source  of  opposition  to  it  will  doubtless 
lie — as  usual  in  philosophy — in  certain  presuppositions  deemed 
metaphysically  necessary,  rather  than  in  evidence  drawn  frcnn 
particular  cases.  Hence  it  is  better  to  consider  first  some  of 
those  presuppositions. 

Perhaps  the  initial  objection  will  be,  that  the  reality  of  the 
tortoise  cannot  be  admitted,  because  it  conflicts  with  that  of  the 
book,  inasmuch  as  both  are  referred  to  the  same  place.  Two 
bodies,  we  shall  be  told,  cannot  occupy  the  same  space.  And 
if  we  presume  to  deny  this  apparent  axiom,  the  reply  will  doubt- 
less be  'Nonsense!'  But  nonsense  is  a  relative  term.  To  the 
ordinary  Euclidean  mind  it  may  well  seem  nonsense  that  parallel 
lines  should  meet;  but  we  know  nowadays  that  the  famous 
'parallel-axiom'  is  really  no  axiom  at  all.  There  is  nothing 
contradictory  in  their  meeting.  And  there  are  intelligible 
systems  of  geometry  in  which  a  straight  line  is  not  the  shortest 
distance  between  two  points.  Indeed,  the  great  service  which 
modern  mathematics  has  rendered  to  philosophy  lies,  I  think, 
not  in  its  ability  to  prove  philosophic  truth,  but  in  the  freeing 
of  the  human  imagination  from  its  belief  that  this  and  that  so- 
called  axiom  is  a  priori  necessary,  and  that  to  deny  it  would  be 
self-contradiction.  It  is,  or  should  be,  a  commonplace  in  phi- 
losophy today  that  (as  Kant  early  discovered)  the  principle  of 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  347 

contradiction  is  infertile  to  account  for  any  specific  fact.  And 
why  is  it  infertile?  Because  no  specific  fact  has  a  specific  contra- 
dictory opposite.  Physical  incompatibiHty  Sigwart  says  we 
find;  but  even  this  incompatibiHty  would  be  better  named 
separation.  Our  eyes  do  not  see  red  and  green  together,  but 
why  might  there  not  be  such  an  eye?  Some  people,  it  is  alleged, 
see  red  in  olive-green.  And  why  should  not  some  one  construct 
a  geometry  containing  the  postulate  that  two  bodies  and  no 
more  may  occupy  the  same  space?  And  another  geometry  in 
which  three  might,  and  so  on?  There  are  no  rules  forbidding  it. 
So  we  are  driven  to  say  that  no  error  compels  us  to  deny  a  truth. 
We  think  it  does,  because  we  are  the  slaves  of  habitual  perception ; 
but  after  all,  reason  has  thrown  off  many  a  heavier  yoke.  One 
might  fairly  estimate  our  advance  from  savagery  by  the  number 
(  o|_possjbilities  we  are  willing  to  admit.  The  more  primitive 
the  mind  is,  the  more  is  excluded.  In  the  field  of  practice. 
Professor  Baldwin  has  recently  brought  this  to  our  notice. 
"Primitive  man"  he  says,  "is  governed  by  an  elaborate  system 
of  rules,  rites,  and  mystic  observances,  which  know  no  excep- 
tions and  show  no  mercy.  We  are  accustomed  to  think  of  the 
'natural  man'  as  a  sort  of  primitive  'individualist,'  free  from  our 
social  conventions,  and  roaming  at  his  own  sweet  will  in  the  broad 
fields  of  life.  But  the  very  reverse  is  the  case.  Primitive  man 
is  a  slave,  subject  to  unheard-of  severities,  brutalities,  terrors, 
sanctions,  persecutions,  all  represented  by  detailed  rites  and 
ceremonies  that  make  his  life  a  perpetual  shiver  of  dread.  .  .  ."^ 
And  a  similar  phenomenon  seems  verifiable  in  the  sphere  of 
beliefs;  both  in  the  race  and  in  the  individual.  Primitive  man  is 
conservative,  and  youth  is  conservative.  Ability  to  take  the 
point  of  view  of  other  people,  to  consider  novel  suggestions, 
unaccustomed  hypotheses,  is  a  late  acquisition  of  civilized  life; 
and  is  almost  the  prerogative  of  maturity  and  old  age.  Then 
history  of  science  is  a  case  in  point.  How  unwilling  was  the 
mediaeval  mind  to  consider  the  proposals  of  the  astronomers  and 
physicists!  The  more  do  we  pride  ourselves — and  justly — upon 
our  increased  toleration  of  all  ideas.  Now  it  is  simply  the  logical 
1  Genetic  Theory  of  Reality,  p.  46, 


348  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

conclusion  of  this  increase,  that  we  come  to  the  position  here 
advocated,  and  admit  that  everything  is  not  only  possible,  but 
compossible.  No  statement,  and  no  fact,  contradicts  any  other 
statement  or  fact;  provided  the  latter  is  truly  other,  or  about 
another. 

Do  we  then  abolish  contradiction  entirely?  By  no  means. 
Having  once  made  a  statement,  one  may  not  deny  it;  in  this 
sense  alone  do  contradictions  ever  occur.  They  are,  truly  ana- 
lyzed, always  of  the  form  'A  is  B'  versus  'It  is  not  true  that 
A  is  B.'  But  the  denial  of  'A  is  B'  is  never  forced  by  another 
judgment  'A  is  C  No  predicate  C  contradicts  another 
predicate  B.  It  is  usual  to  say  that  only  propositions  can  con- 
tradict each  other.  But  this  is,  we  suspect,  not  seriously  meant; 
for  it  is  tacitly  believed  to  be  the  hostility  of  the  predicates  which 
makes  the  propositions  conflict.  Thus,  'this  figure  is  square' 
is  alleged  to  contradict  'this  figure  is  round'  only  because 
'square'  and  'round'  are  supposed  to  be  incompatible.  But 
this  incompatibility  is  just  what  we  deny.  The  true  contra- 
dictory of  'this  figure  is  round'  is  not  'this  figure  is  square'  or 
'triangular'  etc.,  but  'it  is  not  true  that  this  figure  is  round.' 

So  extreme,  we  may  say  so  violent  a  statement,  needs  however 
some  care  in  the  interpreting.  Squareness  cannot  contradict 
roundness,  unless  you  have  already  defined  'square'  by  your 
particular  system  of  geometrical  postulates,  in  such  a  way  as  to 
exclude  'round.'  In  Euclidean  space,  which  we  usually  take  to 
be  the  space  of  our  perception,  we  do  so  define  it;  the  mutual 
exclusion  is  involved  in  the  postulates  of  our  space.  And  there- 
fore, when  we  are  talking  in  terms  of  that  space,  to  say  'that 
square  is  round'  is,  by  definition,  to  say  'that  square  excludes 
squareness'  which  amounts  to  saying  'it  is  not  true  that  that 
square  is  square' — a  self-contradiction.  If  you  agree  beforehand 
that  your  terms  are  understood  as  mutually  inconsistent,  then 
of  course  your  illusory  object,  the  round  square,  is  non-existent. 
But  that  is  because  it  is  not  even  an  object  of  thought,  but  a 
denial  of  such  an  object.  It  is  not  a  figure  with  two  positive 
qualities,  round  and  square,  but  a  square  (or  a  circle)  which  is 
erased  as  we  try  to  picture  or  conceive  it.     Yet  apart  from 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  349 

Euclidean  geometry,  who  would  say  that  a  system  of  postulates 
might  not  be  devised  which  would  enable  squares  to  be  round, 
circles  to  be  triangular,  etc.,  etc.? 

Consider  also  another  pair  of  alleged  opposites;  one,  too,  which 
has  played  no  mean  part  in  the  strife  of  philosophers — to  wit, 
sameness  and  difference.  Many  thinkers  have  taken  for  granted 
that  these  two  contradict  each  other.  Two  things,  they  say, 
cannot  be  the  same  and  yet  different.  The  famous  'dialectic,' 
in  fact,  turns  upon  this  assumption.  Messrs.  Bradley  and  Bosan- 
quet  define  contradiction  as  the  identification  of  the  diverse- 
Now  this  is  dogmatism.  It  cannot  be  proved  by  analysis, 
since  the  situation  is  too  simple  to  be  analyzed ;  it  rests  upon  no 
evidence  of  experience,  since  experience  presents  to  us  a  complex 
of  sameness-in-difference.  If  what  is  self-contradictory  cannot 
be  real,  it  would  therefore  seem  that  sameness-in-difference  is 
not  self-contradictory.  Surely  this  is  more  natural  than  to 
declare  that  sameness  must  contradict  difference,  and  therefore 
the  world  we  see  is  infested  with  non-being! 

Or  take  another,  and  even  harder,  instance.  Does  it  not  seem 
to  be  an  absolute  a  priori  contradiction  to  think  of  a  body  moving 
in  two  directions  at  once?  And  we  certainly  have  no  empirical 
scientific  grounds  for  believing  in  such  monsters.  But  that 
seeming  inconsistency  is  due  to  the  fact  that  in  waking  life  in 
our  space  we  do  not  see  such  things,  and  we  impart  that  habit  into 
the  very  nature  of  body  as  such.  In  dream-life,  however,  we 
frequently  experience  a  doubling  of  identity,  both  in  persons 
and  things;  and  this  is  somewhat  analogous.  Our  friend  A.B. 
is  our  friend  CD.  as  well  as  himself,  and  we  are  not  surprised. 
And  dream-life  is  of  course  quite  as  real  as  waking  life — only  it  is 
not  usually  considered  to  be  numerically  the  same  life. 

No  two  qualities  or  properties  considered  in  themselves  con- 
tradict each  other.  A  thing  indeed  cannot  both  be  and  not  be; 
so  speaks  the  law  of  contradiction.  And  the  corollary  of  it  is, 
that  a  proposition  should  not  be  asserted  and  then  denied.  But 
a  thing  can  have  any  predicate  X  you  please  and  then  at  the 
same  time  any  other  predicate  Y  you  please — always  provided 
you  have  not  already  defined  X  as  the  non-existence  of  Y,  or 
conversely. 


350  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

The  next  metaphysical  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  our  view  may 
perhaps  be  this:  if  all  things  thought  of  are  real,  there  is  no  way  of 
distinguishing  the  illusory  object  from  the  non-illusory.  The 
term  'real'  is  so  general  as  to  have  lost  meaning.  Should  we 
not  have  defined  it  before  venturing  to  employ  it  in  the  large, 
loose  manner  above  used?  Now  this  objection  is  one  of  a  kind 
which  must  always  confront  a  wholesale  view.  Subjective 
idealism,  for  instance,  has  to  furnish  a  criterion  between  the  sub- 
jective and  the  objective,  absolutism  between  reality  and  ap- 
pearance, pragmatism  between  practical  and  theoretical  needs, 
and  so  on.  And  so  we  must  in  our  turn  account  for  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  book  that  is  on  the  table  and  the  tortoise 
that  we  erroneously  assert  to  be  on  it.  Now  what  are  the 
properties  of  each?  When  I  blow  across  the  table  the  book 
will  hold  down  a  piece  of  paper  while  the  tortoise  will  not.  The 
book  weighs,  say,  two  pounds,  the  tortoise  weighs  nothing.  I  can 
open  the  book,  but  I  cannot  open  the  tortoise.  It  is  like  the  old 
example  of  the  real  and  imaginary  dollar.  The  former  will 
bu)'  something,  the  latter  will  not.  To  be  sure,  Kant  declared 
that  the  two  differ  in  no  describable  way;  but  surely  that  was 
because  he  considered  them  abstractly,  merely  by  themselves, 
and  not  in  the  concrete  situations  of  life.  In  short,  the  illusory 
objects  have  no  consequences,  the  other  objects  have.  It  makes 
no  difference  whether  you  accept  the  tortoise  or  not;  you  try  to 
act  upon  him  and  nothing  can  be  done.  You  can  go  through 
the  motions  of  dissecting  him,  but  those  motions  alter  nothing 
and  are  not  affected  by  his  presence  or  absence.  Now  thestf 
seem  to  be  the  facts  of  the  case,  and  we  are  indebted  to  the 
pragmatists  for  having  pointed  them  out.  The  illusory  object, 
then,  is  real  enough,  but  it  is  not  effective;  it  is  not  creative,  it 
produces  nothing,  and  is  not  affected  by  anything.  We  can 
imagine  it  producing  something,  and  then  it  does  so;  but  the 
productiveness  goes  no  further  than  our  judgment  pushes  it. 
The  non-illusory  object,  however,  takes  the  game  into  its  own 
hands,  and  affects  the  environment  and  the  future  course  of 
events  whether  we  go  on  to  predicate  them  or  not.  The  differ- 
ence is  one  of  fertility  or  coherence.  Errors  are  the  drones,  facts 
are  the  workers.     But  the  one  class  is  just  as  real  as  the  other. 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  351 

Here  we  may  be  accused  of  philosophic  partisanship.  In 
defining  the  erroneous  as  that  which  does  not  cohere  with  the 
remainder  of  our  world,  we  seem  to  have  chosen  the  idealistic 
theory  of  truth.  And  ipso  facto  we  seem  to  reject  the  (realistic) 
independence-theory.  Now  it  would  be  a  pity  if  our  results 
hung  upon  the  solution  of  so  difficult  an  issue.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  however,  the  independence-theory  could  easily  assimilate 
our  view.  However  much  independence  there  may  be  between 
the  parts  of  our  world,  there  is  always  enough  system  in  any 
given  case  for  us  to  test  truth  and  error  by  it.  There  is  no 
'reality'  so  isolated  that  it  does  not  belong  in  some  context; 
and  in  the  actual  working  we  estimate  its  '  reality '  or  '  unreality ' 
by  comparing  it  with  that  context.  An  alleged  hallucination 
we  compare  with  the  physical  world;  a  faint  odor,  challenged,  we 
attest  by  repeated  sniffing;  a  sum  of  a  column  of  figures  we  add 
up  in  reverse  order;  and  so  on.  Everything  that  we  commonly 
call  real,  whether  physical,  or  psychical,  or  spiritual,  or  conceptual, 
has  enough  connections  in  its  own  field  for  us  to  be  able  to  verify 
it  by  examining  those  connections. 

But  to  return.  There  is  not  the  least  need  of  distinguishing 
reality  from  unreality  in  order  to  distinguish  truth  from  error. 
We  are  here  confronted,  I  believe,  by  a  superstition  as  injurious 
as  it  is  deep-rooted.  Unwittingly  we  judge  reality  after  the 
analogy  of  human  rivalries,  competition,  the  struggle  for  food. 
As  there  is  not  enough  provender  for  all,  we  vie  with  one  another 
for.it;  one  person's  satiety  is  another's  want.  So  we  think  that 
there  can  be  no  reaUty  without  a  correlative  unreality;  as  if  the 
supply  were  limited.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  modern 
society  is  ever  more  earnestly  attempting  to  abolish  this  ex- 
clusiveness,  we  have  it  too  thoroughly  beaten  into  us  to  be  able 
easily  to  dislodge  it.  In  social  theory,  lovers  of  peace  that  most 
of  us  are,  we  should  not  dare  to  uphold  such  an  ideal.  But  in 
metaphysics  it  seems  to  do  little  harm,  for  metaphysics  has  come 
to  have  little  bearing  upon  the  rest  of  life;  and  the  presence  of 
the  superstition  passes  unnoticed.  The  result  for  metaphysics 
is  contradiction,  just  as  for  practical  life  it  is  pain.  But,  as  the 
simple-minded  Parmenides  taught.  Being  is  and  non-Being  is 


352  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

not.  There  is  enough  of  Being  to  supply  all,  without  taxing 
some  into  giving  up  their  share. 

Another  rather  fundamental  objection  is  this:  our  view  would 
rule  out  an  old  and  respectable  tradition  which  believes  in 
degrees  of  reality.  For  if  unreal  being  is  a  contradiction  in  terms, 
there  can  be  no  slightest  lessening  of  the  fulness  of  being  in  any 
instance.  An  abstraction  like  a  perfect  circle  would  be  as  real 
as  the  sun,  or  the  Roman  empire,  or  God.  But  our  view,  with 
its  all-or-nothing  attitude,  misses  the  richness  and  the  graded 
quality  of  reality — as  do  all  wholesale,  downright  views.  More- 
over, if  unreal  being  were  an  inconsistency  then  so  is  dim  light; 
for  that  is  light  which  is  not  all  light.  But  I  answer,  there  is  a 
distinction  of  kind  between  degrees  of  light  and  degrees  of  being. 
Whatever  has  non-being  must  first  be,  as  the  substance  is  prior 
to  the  accident.  It  makes  no  difference  how  small  the  degree 
of  non-being,  that  non-being  is  still  the  real  negation  of  being — 
which  is  the  same  as  saying  a  real  nothing.  It  is  self -contra- 
dictory: the  fons  et  origo,  indeed,  of  self-contradiction.  To  be 
sure,  some  say  that  nothing  is  a  real  entity — an  existing  thing. 
It  would  be  just  as  true  to  say  it  was  not:  for  nothing  is  a  self 
annulling  thing,  naturally.  But  neither  statement  gives  warrant 
for  the  assertion,  that  positive  objects  are  infected  by  nothingness 
in  such  wise  as  to  reduce  their  reality.  There  can  be  all  the 
nothings  you  wish,  but  they  do  not  eat  into  and  partially  destroy 
the  being  of  any  particular  object.  Of  light,  now,  the  case  is 
otherwise.  An  object  which  is  partly  dark  must  be  in  order  to 
be  dark;  but  there  is  no  contradiction  between  being  and  dark- 
ness. It  does  not  have  to  be  lighted  in  order  to  be  dark.  But 
non-being  has  to  be  in  order  not  to  be.  And  the  doctrine  of 
degrees  of  reality — which  is,  I  believe,  a  valuable  doctrine — 
loses  none  of  its  worth  if  for  reality  we  substitute  some  other 
term,  such  as  perfection,  or  complexity,  or  what  not. 

Let  us  now  examine  a  practical  objection.  Suppose  one  grants 
that  everything  he  imagines  or  conceives  is  real:  then  see  the 
result!  As  he  walks  in  the  morning  to  his  office,  there  happens 
into  his  mind  the  idea  of  a  bloodhound  in  pursuit  of  him.  Dashing 
forward   at   top  speed,   he   loses  hat  and   bag,  colliding  with 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  353 

passers-by,  only  to  turn  suddenly  at  a  right  angle  because  the 
thought  of  an  advancing  mastodon  has  arisen  in  his  brain.  So 
the  poor  man  will  proceed  through  his  day,  suffering  dreadfully 
from  an  enlarged  conception  of  reality.  We  may  begin  by 
describing  his  malady  as  auto-suggestion  but  we  must  end  by 
confining  him  as  a  lunatic.  A  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  our  theory, 
indeed.  And  yet  I  believe  the  victim  might  have  escaped  this 
fate.  Admit  everything  to  be  real,  yes:  but  remember  also  that 
some  objects  are  fertile  of  consequences  and  others  are  not.  Our 
friend  need  only  realize  that  illusory  objects  are  absolutely  irrel- 
evant objects;  they  contradict  nothing  and  they  produce  nothing. 
They  are  the  waste  products,  the  dung  of  the  universe.  And 
when  one  tries  to  adjust  himself  to  them  his  deeds  are  futile  and 
irrelevant  to  the  business  of  life.  But  these  are  terms  of  practice. 
Insanity,  in  short,  does  not  mean  a  group  of  erroneous  beliefs; 
it  is  not  a  theoretical,  but  a  practical  category.  However  many 
absurdities  enter  one's  head,  yes,  however  many  of  them  he 
believes,  so  long  as  he  is  able  to  repress  the  tendency  to  act  upon 
them  and  attends  to  the  'realities  of  life'  as  we  call  them,  he  is 
adjudged  sane.  And  as  matter  of  fact,  it  is  the  lot  of  most  men 
who  are  thought  mentally  sound  to  own  a  goodly  share  of  these 
suppressed  beliefs.  Who  would  be  willing  to  confess  all  the 
idiotic  thoughts,  the  shameful  suggestions  more  than  half  credited, 
that  pass  through  his  head  in  a  day? 

We  have  said  that  everything  positive  is  real,  and  we  called 
negations  alone  unreal.  But  is  not  negation  a  genuine  attribute 
of  things?  White  is  not  red,  you  are  not  I,  time  is  not  space, 
etc.  Without  negations,  reality  would  be  featureless.  And  in 
the  instance  above  discussed,  it  is  absolutely  essential  that  we 
recognize  that  the  book  on  my  table  is  not  the  tortoise  and  the 
tortoise  is  not  the  book;  each  retains  its  particularity  by  negation 
of  the  other.  Now  in  one  meaning  of  negation,  it  is  doubtless 
quite  real,  viz.,  in  the  meaning  'other  than.'  This  is  the 
predicative  or  relational  use,  as  in  'white  is  not  red,'  'the  book 
is  not  the  tortoise,'  'you  are  not  I.'  But  there  is  another  use, 
whereby  it  is  taken  to  mean  denial  of  existence  or  of  truth ;  as  in 
judgments  Uke  'there  are  no  centaurs,'  'no  men  are  perfect,' 


354  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

'nothing  is  better  than  wisdom'  or  'there  is  no  tortoise  here.' 
In  these  examples,  certain  things  are  commonly  understood  to 
be  excluded  from  reality;  but  such  exclusion,  such  non-existence, 
is  for  our  view  not  a  fact.  Non-being  is  not;  reality  excludes 
naught  from  itself.  We  do  not,  then,  claim  that  there  are  no 
true  negative  judgments.  But  every  negative  judgment,  cor- 
rectly put,  is  of  the  form  'A  is  other  than  B.'  'There  is  no 
book  here,'  means  'what  is  here  is  other  than  a  book.'  'No 
men  are  perfect, '  should  be  interpreted  '  all  men  are  other  than 
perfect.'  'Nothing  is  better  than  wisdom,'  we  should  restate 
as  'wisdom  is  better  than  anything  else.'  Our  analysis  may 
be  illustrated  by  reference  to  the  old  fallacy:  "nothing  is  better 
than  wisdom,  but  dry  bread  is  better  than  nothing,  therefore, 
etc."  Here  the  mistake  consists  in  taking  nothing  to  be  an  entity, 
whereas  if  the  propositions  were  understood  in  our  sense,  this 
could  not  occur. 

The  above  objections  are  perhaps  the  more  prominent  of  those 
which  rest  upon  certain  metaphysical  assumptions.  Others 
indubitably  there  are;  but  some  of  them  at  least  will  be  dealt  with 
if  we  pass  to  the  application  of  our  theory  in  specific  cases.  Let 
us  then  proceed  to  this,  the  real  test  of  our  proffered  solution. 

We  begin  with  some  errors  of  sense,  I  judge  a  distant  bush 
to  be  three  feet  high  when  it  is  'really'  four  feet  high.  Here  I 
perceive  a  real  three-foot  bush.  To  be  three  feet  high  is  a 
property  of  that  four-foot  bush.  The  bush  has,  indeed,  potenti- 
ally an  infinite  number  of  heights  besides  the  four-foot  height. 
Any  object,  we  may  say,  spreads  like  a  grease-spot;  by  which  we 
mean  that  it  stands  ready  to  take  on  an  endless  number  of  attri- 
butes, relations,  etc.  Its  properties  are  infinitely  infinite,  as 
great  in  number  as  the  point-continuum,  which  surpasses  the 
denumerable  infinity  by  the  infinity  of  irrational  fractions  and 
transcendental  numbers.  It  is  like  an  area,  or  a  finite  line,  in 
its  inexhaustibility.  Even  common  sense  admits  a  vast  wealth 
of  predicates  to  any  one  thing;  but  our  view  goes  much  farther. 
And  of  all  these  properties,  how  few,  relatively,  are  the  effective 
ones,  those  which  alone  common  sense  considers  real!  It  is 
like  nature's  lavish  production  of  eggs  in  some  of  the  lower  species. 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  355 

Out  of  a  million  eggs,  two  or  three  perhaps  are  strong  enough  to 
survive;  the  rest  are,  biologically,  as  if  they  were  not.  The  bio- 
logical law  thus  appears  to  be  but  one  case  of  a  wider  law;  a  law 
by  which  reality  itself  puts  forth,  with  infinite  prodigality,  an 
inexhaustible  number  of  attributes  of  each  object.  So  the  bush 
may  he  of  any  height  you  please;  but,  in  the  case  we  have  desig- 
nated, our  apprehension  of  all  of  these  but  the  four-foot  height 
is  incompetent  to  enable  us  to  deal  with  the  thing.  The  appre- 
hension which  gets  that  particular  height  is  the  one  which  helps 
us  to  understand  the  other  qualities  of  the  bush;  for  that  height 
of  four  feet  is  the  quality  by  which  the  bush  takes  its  place  in  the 
environment,  the  quality  which  coheres  with  the  other  'real' 
qualities.  As  we  noted  above,  in  this  matter  of  'coherence'  our 
view  resembles  idealism  and  pragmatism.  But  while  these  two 
say  that  reality  is  coherence  or  effectiveness,  we  make  reality  a 
wider,  richer  thing,  which  displays  such  a  boundless  creativity 
as  we  find  in  two  of  its  chief  categories,  space  and  life.  We  include 
in  it  the  abstract,  the  partial,  the  insignificant.  And  in  fact  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  any  metaphysic  can  do  otherwise,  for  the 
unreal,  the  finite,  etc.,  are,  and  the  appearance  really  appears, 
and  the  abstraction  is  actually  abstracted;  so  that  we  always 
have  to  say  'the  unreal  really  is.' 

But  let  us  take  up  some  more  errors  of  sense.  Suppose  that  I 
see  two  objects  where  there  is  one.  Here  the  duplicity  is  real  and 
does  not  conflict  with  the  unity.  The  same  remarks  may  be  made 
as  above  in  regard  to  the  effectiveness  of  its  unity  and  the  ineffect- 
iveness of  its  duplicity.  And  of  course  we  shall  declare  that 
there  is  no  contradiction  in  a  thing  being  one  and  at  the  same  time 
two.  Perhaps  this  may  be  easier  admitted  than  some  of  our 
declarations,  inasmuch  as  there  seem  to  be  many  instances  of 
this  sort.  The  same  person  is  one  and  two,  for  he  is  quite  a 
different  being  to  his  friend  from  what  he  is  to  his  enemy,  etc. 
And  the  difficulty  about  the  same  body  occupying  two  places 
has  been  already  treated.  The  judgments  made  by  the  color- 
blind offer,  I  think,  nothing  in  principle  not  yet  discussed. 
They  are  either  denials — 'that  object  is  not  red'  or  substitu- 
tions 'that   object  which   you  call   red  is  brown.'     The  denial 


356  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

has  no  object,  but  is  an  attempt  to  remove  a  suggested  object: 
the  red  color.  Hence  it  offers  no  positive  unreal  content.  The 
substitution  must  be  admitted  true,  but  does  not  contradict 
the  vision  of  the  normal  eye,  because  no  color  precludes  another 
color.  Time-illusions  are  perhaps  more  interesting,  though 
logically  analogous  to  the  preceding  cases.  The  misdating  of  an 
event  seems  flatly  inconsistent  with  the  fact;  but  there  is  no 
a  priori  reason  why  a  given  event  should  not  happen  at  any 
number  of  different  times.  The  postulates  which  govern  the 
nature  of  the  time  we  perceive,  are  no  more  sacred  than  the 
postulates  of  Euclidean  space.  Of  course,  we  may  be  told  that 
a  different  date  makes  a  different  event,  because  the  environ- 
ment will  affect  the  event.  Had  the  death  of  Caesar,  per  im- 
possibile,  happened  in  500  A.D.,  it  would  have  occurred  in  a 
very  different  manner.  This  we  may  admit;  but  if  sameness 
does  not  contradict  difference,  it  might  also  have  taken  place 
in  the  original  Roman  fashion.  On  our  principles  the  reality  of 
no  one  specific  object  interferes  with  that  of  another;  therefore, 
no  particular  event  at  any  particular  date  can  be  considered 
unreal.  The  distinction  between  illusion  and  fact  must  be  con- 
ceived in  terms  of  efficacy. 

In  certain  psychological  experiments  the  subject  perceives  ^»^ 
the  sensory  stimulations  in  the  reverse  of  their  true  order.  Surely 
we  cannot  deny  that  here  is  a  contradiction?  Is  not  the  reverse 
inconsistent  with  the  original  order  in  any  system  of  postulates? 
And  this  case  is  typical  of  many.  If  an  object  in  the  dark  is 
illuminated  for  but  a  fraction  of  a  second,  I  may  see  its  parts  in 
the  wrong  order.  Proof-readers  often  see  the  interchanged 
letters  of  a  word  as  if  correctly  printed.  Who  among  us  has  seen 
the  cinematograph  reversed,  so  that  people  are  seen  to  eat  and 
drink  backwards,  etc.?  Professor  K.  Pearson  suggests^  that  one 
who  left  the  earth  faster  than  light  travels  would  see  history 
unroll  itself  into  the  past.  However  mechanically  impossible 
they  are,  such  experiences  are  not  inconsistent,  either  with  them- 
selves or  with  reality.  After  all,  a  reversal  of  order  is  but  a 
change  of  position  in  one  or  more  of  the  members  of  the  series. 

>  Somewhere  in  the  Grammar  of  Science,  I  believe,  but  cannot  verify  it. 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  357 

The  order  ABC  is  no  more  adverse  to  the  order  A^gB,  than  is  the 
position  of  B  in  one  place  contradicted  by  its  positioip  in  another; 
and  that  we  have  already  declared  to  be  not  the  ca&fe.  In  short, 
time  is  not  irreversible.  There  may  be  many  events  that  never 
recur,  but  they  could  consistently  do  so.  The  dogma  of  the  in- 
herent irreversibility  of  time  is  an  instance  of  the  superstition  we 
are  combating  throughout  this  investigation — the  superstition 
that  two  or  more  distinct  things  can  be  mutually  inconsistent. 

More  difficult  than  errors  of  sense,  are  errors  of  thought. 
Thought  can  take  tremendous  liberties:  its  range  of  objects  has 
no  limit  that  can  be  designated,  for  such  a  limit  is  passed  in 
thought.  If  now  any  object  whatsoever  is  real,  all  objects  of 
thought  are  real;  and  quite  independently  of  our  belief  or  dis- 
belief in  them.  And  there  are  some  hard  cases.  Suppose,  e.  g., 
I  imagine  that  my  view  of  error  is  erroneous.  There  my  fancy 
must  be  true;  the  Objektiv,  '  that  my  view  is  wrong,'  is  real.  Yet 
I  view  the  opposite  as  real.  Now  how  can  a  theory  be  right  and 
wrong  at  once?  Is  not  this  a  genuine  contradiction?  Surely 
this  is  worse  than  a  body  being  in  two  places  at  once.  Yes,  it  is 
worse;  for  it  is  a  flat  denial.  There  is  no  positive  object  before 
me  in  so  far  as  I  say,  '  this  theory  is  not  true.'  It  is,  so  to  speak, 
an  attempted  destruction  of  a  positive  object,  viz.,  of  the  theory 
itself.  The  destruction  is  however  a  mere  act,  having  no  content ; 
and  as  it  has  no  content,  it  is  not  an  unreal  entity,  but  a  non- 
entity. If  on  the  other  hand  the  theory  were  truly  wrong  and 
one  should  say  'it  is  correct,'  the  situation  is  nearly  the  same. 
For  there  seems  a  real  contradiction  between  'the  theory  is 
correct'  and  'the  theory  is  false,'  one  of  the  Objektive  here  must 
then  be  an  unreal  entity.  But  these  are  judgments  of  reflection, 
not  of  simple  apprehension.  Their  Objektive  are  respectively 
'the  theory  being  true'  and  'the  theory  being  not  true';  and 
the  latter  is  just  the  flat  denial  of  the  former,  and  conversely. 
The  erroneous  view,  in  other  words,  is  just  a  denial  of  the  true 
view;  it  has  no  peculiar  content  of  its  own,  but  is  an  attempt  to 
suppress  or  destroy  the  content  of  the  other.  When,  then,  I  say 
erroneously  'my  view  is  the  true  one' — provided  I  confine 
myself  to  this  proposition  and  do  not  go  into  the  details  of  'my 


358  ^JTHE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

view' — there <■'  ^  no  positive  unreal  content  before  me.  In 
neither  asserA>on  about  the  view  itself  is  there  a  contradiction  be- 
tween twoftipjects  or  entities. 

Another  fase  is:  3  +  1=5-  This  is  simple.  We  define 
5  as  3  +  2,  and  we  define  2  as  inconsistent  with  i,  and  hence 
3  +  I  =  5  J6  an  attempt  to  deny  our  definitions;  and  that  is 
all  it  is.  It  presents  no  positive  object — except  it  assume  a 
new  definition  of  3,  i,  and  2;  but  in  that  case  there  is  no  error. 

A  more  serious  instance  is  this:  suppose  I  say  'A  is  greater 
than  B  and  B  is  greater  than  C,  therefore  A  is  less  than  C 
Or  again,  'A  is  essentially  similar  to  B  and  B  is  after  C,  therefore 
A  is  before  C  Many  analogous  instances  readily  suggest 
themselves.  Now  these  are  chains  of  reasoning,  and  there  is 
implication  leading  from  the  premises  to  a  certain  conclusion. 
The  difficulty  of  such  cases  is  that  another  and  positive  propo- 
sition, put  in  place  of  the  conclusion,  appears  to  contradict  the 
premises — which  are  themselves  positive.  Here  then  would 
seem  to  be  an  occasion  where  there  is  genuine  contradiction 
between  two  distinct  Objektive — a  possibility  our  theory  had  to 
deny.  But  we  must  ask,  how  does  'A  is  less  than  C  contra- 
dict '  A  is  greater  than  B  and  B  is  greater  than  C '  ?  We  answer, 
only  in  so  far  as  it  contradicts  their  consequence,  'A  is  greater 
than  C  But  it  is  not  true  that'  it  contradicts  that  conse- 
quence. It  is  a  priori  quite  possible  that  A  >  B  and  B  >  A 
are  true  together.  In  fact  some  have  defined  equality  by  this 
property:  A  =  B  when  'A  >  B'  and  'B  >  A'  together  are 
true.  In  the  number-system  we  are  accustomed  to  use,  and  in 
the  systems  of  quantity  that  we  use,  *A  >  B'  is  indeed  so 
defined  that  'A  <  B'  is  not,  except  in  the  case  of  equality, 
at  the  same  time  true.  But  a  different  number-system  and  a 
different  quantity-system  are  conceivable.  Since  then  'A  is 
less  than  C  does  not  contradict  'A  is  greater  than  C,'  it  does 
not  contradict  the  premises  'A  is  greater  than  B'  and  'B  is 
greater  than  C  To  be  sure  the  question  remains:  how  are  we 
to  distinguish  the  false  from  the  true,  if  neither  contradicts  the 
fact?  By  the  criterion  of  efficacy,  fertility,  coherence.  Thus: 
'A  <  C  does  not  follow  from   those   premises,  nor  do    other 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  359 

properties  of  the  system  in  which  we  are  working  follow  from 
'A  <  C  The  test  of  the  truth  of  a  supposition  always  is: 
does  it  cohere  with,  explain  or  follow  from  the  rest  of  the  system 
to  which  it  belongs?  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  make  such  a 
judgment  as  'A  >  B  and  B  >  C,  but  it  is  not  true  that  A  >  C  ' 
there  we  have  a  simple  negation  with  no  positive  content.  Com- 
parable to  these  cases  would  also  be  the  assertions  'the  law  of 
contradiction  is  false '  '  the  falsity  of  the  law  of  contradiction  is 
true'  and  analogous  ones  which  may  easily  be  devised;  they 
have  no  positive  object,  and  no  unreal  entity. 

Certain  practical  instances  may  seem  yet  harder  to  reconcile 
with  our  view.  Suppose  an  accused  man  proves  an  alibi.  Are 
we  not  justified  in  inferring  that  he  is  not  the  criminal,  on  the 
ground  that  a  man  cannot  be  in  two  places  at  once?  Surely  we 
do  not  go  so  far,  in  our  demolition  of  a  priori  incompatibles,  as  to 
deny  that  ground !  But  we  do  not  need  to  do  it.  We  can  make 
the  usual  inference ;  though  not  from  any  axiom  about  two  places, 
but  solely  on  the  basis  of  our  own  past  experience.  We  have 
not  seen  men  in  two  places  at  once,  and  we  do  not  expect  so  to 
see  them.  The  alibi  lets  the  man  off,  because  we  have  found  the 
property  of  unique  space-occupancy  to  be  the  one  which  fits  in  with 
the  rest  of  our  experience.  It  is  like  our  beHef  in  the  morrow's 
rising  sun.  It  would  break  no  law,  either  of  logic  or  of  physics, 
did  the  sun  not  rise ;  it  would  doubtless  be  due  to  some  cause.  If 
some  bodies  were  some  day  found  in  two  places  at  once,  we  should 
only  say  that  the  character  of  our  space  had  altered.  The  cases 
where  we  base  our  reasonings  on  the  belief  in  contradiction,  are 
cases  where  we  expect  a  certain  body  of  laws  to  continue.  When 
we  say  'so-and-so  must  be  true,  otherwise  a  contradiction!' 
our  words  should  be,  'so-and-so  must  be  true,  because  I  do  not 
believe  the  laws  and  general  character  of  my  environment  will 
change.'  Most  of  our  alleged  contradictions  in  empirical  subject- 
matter  are  only  cases  of  strong  expectation  against  the  proposed 
assertion. 

But  here  we  run  into  another  practical  difficulty.  In  cases 
like  the  above,  we  make  a  denial:  'he  is  not  the  criminal.' 
Our  theory  has  urged  that  denials  are  not  objectively  valid,  but 


36o  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

are  mere  acts  of  rejection.  Has  'not'  then  no  objective  counter- 
part? Of  course,  when  it  means  'other  than'  it  has  one:  as 
'the  grass  is  not  green  but  brown.'  But  even  when  used  in  a 
denial,  has  it  not  a  kind  of  reality?  Let  us  consider  the  propo- 
sition above  stated. 

Here  it  is  not  enough  to  interpret  the  judgment,  'he  is  other 
than  the  criminal ' ;  for  he  might — since  no  a  priori  axiom  forbids 
it, — be  also  the  criminal.  The  important  part  of  the  meaning  is 
'it  is  false  that  he  is  the  criminal';  and  this  negation  of  crimi- 
nality is  objective  fact.  The  prevention  of  the  man's  execution 
is  the  practical  end  and  that  end  is  attained  only  if  the  negation 
be  objectively  real.  There  is  then  apparently  a  real  state  of 
affairs  which  contradicts  the  judgment,  'he  is  the  criminal': 
hence  this  erroneous  proposition  cannot  have  any  real  object 
but  only  an  unreal,  because  contradictory  one, — and  our  view  is 
annulled.  And  this  case  is  only  one  of  a  great  class;  cases  where 
anything  is  correctly  asserted  not  to  be  so-and-so.  Now  undoubt- 
edly both  of  these  statements,  however  contradictory  they  seem, 
represent  objective  reality.  But  there  is  still  no  logical  ground 
for  making  the  negation  mean  anything  besides  'other  than. 
'The  man  is  other  than  the  criminal'  is  true,  and  there  is  really 
nothing  in  this  to  prevent  him  from  being  also  the  criminal. 
But  it  alone  of  the  two  statements  is  the  one  that  coheres  with 
and  affects  the  rest.  And  since  men  customarily  take  the  ex- 
clusive view  of  these  matters,  then  when  we  wish  to  emphasize 
this  otherness-relation,  we  do  it  by  denying  the  positive  judgment. 
There  is  nothing  about  the  real  situation  that  prevents  him  from 
being  the  criminal.  We  wish  him  however  to  have  the  privileges 
of  the  free,  and  under  human  institutions  he  will  not  have  them 
if  the  error  is  endorsed.  So  we  exclude  the  error.  But  the 
affirmation  of  the  truth  does  not  truly  need  the  exclusion  of  the 
error.  We  are  so  under  the  yoke  of  the  exclusive  habit  that  we 
feel  that  the  exclusion  alone  guarantees  the  true.  But  fact 
contains  no  exclusions,  no  denials,  only  affirmations. 

Doubtless  there  are  further  instances  of  error  which  appear 
to  provide  a  reductio  ad  ahsurdum\  but  it  is  bad  method  to  parade 
too  many  objections.  Let  us  rather  conclude  our  account  by  a 
summary  statement  and  pass  to  the  consequences  for  meta- 


>        N 

No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  \  361 

physics.  Our  theory  rests  upon  two  propositions.  First,  there 
cannot  be  any  unreal  object-matter  or  content;  everything  posi- 
tive is  real.  An  unreal  being — no  matter  how  slight  the  degree 
of  unreality — is  a  contradiction  in  terms;  there  are  none  si.ch. 
We  should  condemn  nothing  as  'appearance,'  'abstract,'  'von- 
being,'  etc.  This  is,  we  believe,  the  first  great  commandment  of 
metaphysics:  Being  is  and  everything  that  is  at  all  is  Being,  and 
non-Being  is  not.  The  second  support  of  our  position  is  a  sort 
of  counterpart  of  the  first,  yet  not,  I  think,  deducible  from  it, 
viz.,  no  two  distinct  entities  contradict  each  other.  This  is 
perfectly  general:  'entity'  here  means  thing,  property,  relation^ 
proposition, — any  category  or  object  whatsoever.  The  only 
contradiction  in  the  universe  is  flat  denial,  viz.,  'A  is  B'  versus  ' 
'it  is  not  true  that  A  is  B.'  The  view  which  we  have  proffered 
is  the  logical  product  of  these  two  principles.  If  everything  is 
in  its  own  right  real,  and  if  its  reality  does  not  conflict  with  any- 
thing else's  reality,  then  illusory  objects  are,  metaphysically 
speaking,  absolutely  real.  They  differ  from  so-called  real  objects 
in  the  fact  that  they  are  not  effective  or  fertile.  And  we  have 
tried  to  show  that  though  this  view  seems  at  first  hardly  less  than 
insane,  yet  it  deprives  us  of  no  principles  that  are  of  the  least 
value.  Unreality  is  not  a  category  that  is  needed  or  used  for 
either  practice  or  theory. 

But,  after  all,  to  what  purpose  is  our  theory?  Has  it  that 
fertility  which,  according  to  its  own  account,  it  should  have  if  it 
is  true?  We  have  proposed  to  substitute  for  the  old  pair  'real 
and  unreal '  the  couple  '  fertile  and  infertile ' ;  but  is  this  more 
than  a  change  of  words  or  the  avoidance  of  a  formal  contradic- 
tion? No  substantial  advantage  has  yet  appeared,  no  new  light 
upon  the  structure  of  the  universe  or  the  means  of  ascertaining  it. 

We  began  with  the  gloomy  prognostication  that  our  task  was  a 
thankless  one.  And  certainly  our  solution  does  not  directly 
suggest  any  hypothesis  as  to  the  make-up  of  the  world.  But 
indirectly  I  believe  it  to  be  of  no  mean  value,  and  that  in  two 
respects;  as  regards  method,  and  doctrine.  As  to  method,  it 
promotes  a  certain  openness  of  mind.  If  all  is  real,  the  horizon 
of  metaphysics  is  vastly  widened ;  many  possibilities  now  straight- 
way dubbed  nonsense  and  dismissed  before  they  are  examined,. 


362  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

will  be  candidly  entertained.  In  this  way  the  chances  of  some 
happy  discovery  are  many  times  increased.  We  have  heard 
mi.ch,  from  scientists  of  repute,  about  the  blessed  quality  of 
im.\gination  in  science;  but  imagination  in  philosophy  is  hardly 
so  I'xtoUed.  Other  good  counsel  in  abundance  is  given  our  phi- 
losophers: 'be  not  abstract  but  concrete,  be  empirical,  know  the 
sciences,  use  the  exact  deductive  method,  take  a  broad  point  of 
view,'  etc.,  etc.;  but  who  has  said  to  them  'never  dismiss  an 
hypothesis  on  account  of  its  apparent  absurdity?'  Small 
progress  would  have  been  achieved  by  the  physical  sciences  if 
their  pioneers  had  been  afraid  to  venture  beyond  the  common- 
sense  of  their  time.  Philosophy  itself  would  have  made  little 
advance,  had  not  our  predecessors  speculated  more  freely  than 
we  dare  to  do.  We  smile  in  a  superior  way  at  some  of  their 
flights ;  but  they  have  the  merit  of  sacrificing  themselves  to  show 
us  what  is  wrong, — while  we  are  held  back  by  fear  of  doing  the 
like.  Our  timidity  is  also  seen  in  that  we  hesitate  to  occupy  our- 
selves with  specific  questions  like  the  origin  of  life,  the  nature  of 
it,  the  definition  of  soul  and  spirit,  the  chances  of  personal  im- 
mortality, the  existence  of  an  efficacious  God,  and  so  on — all 
being  questions  of  vital  interest,  upon  which  we  fear  the  attitude 
of  science.  And  be  it  noted  that  science  itself  eschews  any  de- 
cision upon  these  matters.  We  confine  ourselves  to  the  abstract- 
est  possible  questions,  whose  settlement  could  not  be  attacked 
by  those  who  deal  with  the  concrete:  such  as  the  dependence  or 
independence  of  reaUty  on  mind,  the  objectivity  or  subjectivity 
of  values,  of  qualities,  and  the  like.  Such  limitation  of  our 
interest  indicates  a  lack  of  philosophic  vitality.  Compared  with 
the  speculative  vigor  of  Hegel,  Schelling,  Liebniz,  Aristotle,  or 
Plato,  it  even  suggests  decadence.  We  need,  I  affirm,  to  be 
more  hospitable  to  ideas,  more  generous  to  welcome  the  new 
and  strange,  even  the  disreputable,  to  cast  aside  the  fear  of  com- 
mon sense's  disapproval.  Thus  may  we  inject  blood  into  the 
anaemic  patient. 

Naturally,  we  urge  no  blind  acceptance.  Our  theory  insists, 
by  its  very  definition  of  error,  that  we  must  test  all  hypotheses 
by  their  fruits.  Accept  all,  but  test  all.  But  in  a  critical  age 
like  this  the  danger  is  not  that  we  do  not  test  them:  it  is  that  we 


No.  3.]  ERROR  AND    UNREALITY.  363 

have  too  little  to  test.  Not  rashness,  but  poverty  of  resource,  is 
our  trouble. 

As  regards  doctrine  our  view  suggests  both  a  purgation  and  a 
more  promising  line  of  inquiry.  The  notion  of  unreality  or 
appearance  must  be  discarded  and  the  search  for  a  definition  of 
Being  abandoned ;  the  only  goal  worth  seeking  in  this  direction  is 
the  nature  and  the  principles  of  the  things  that  are.  The  dis- 
tinction of  real  from  unreal  is  more  than  a  formal  contradiction ; 
it  is  an  incubus.  It  not  only  fixes  upon  us  certain  harassing 
problems,  such  as  error,  appearance,  et  al.;  but  also,  like  the  ad- 
vertiser of  breakfast-foods,  it  seduces  us  into  chewing  upon 
something  which  affords  neither  pleasure  nor  nutriment.  Our 
desire,  in  seeking  knowledge,  is  to  satisfy  the  contemplative 
instinct  or  to  serve  practical  ends.  Now  the  definition  of  Being 
as  over  against  unreality  is  generally  admitted  to  promote  no 
practical  aims;  but  it  likewise  fails  to  gratify  the  impulse  to 
contemplation.  There  is  no  reason  why  an  object's  being  real 
makes  it  more  satisfactory  to  think  about,  than  its  being  unreal. 
There  is  no  more  before  the  mind  in  case  of  reality;  for  reality  is 
no  added  content  or  quality.  There  is  just  as  much  stuff  for  the 
mind  to  be  exercised  upon  in  either  case.  The  reason  why  reality 
appears  to  be  more  satisfactory  to  the  mind  than  illusion,  is  that 
it  has  been  understood  to  mean  more.  It  has  been  understood 
to  mean,  e.  g.,  a  persisting  universal,  a  fulfilled  purpose,  a  material 
force,  etc.  Is  it  not  obvious  that  it  is  the  character  which  is 
hereby  presented  us,  not  the  reality,  that  makes  it  acceptable? 
For  a  reality  which  had  no  identifiable  properties  would  be  no 
more  than  the  old  thing-in-itself,  and  as  profitless.  Let  us  then 
extirpate  the  notions  of  unreality,  appearance,  non-being,  out  of 
philosophy. 

Of  course  it  sounds  exact  and  subtle  to  distinguish  between 
being,  reality,  existence,  subsistence.  Yet  there  are  false  sub- 
tleties ;  and  certainly  these  cannot  be  distinguished  in  any  such 
way  as  has  been  usual.  There  are  no  degrees,  no  stages,  no 
shades,  in  Being.  The  usual  differentiation  is  based  upon  intro- 
ducing the  notion  of  unreality,  as  when  it  is  said  that  being  is 
less  real  than  reality  or  subsistence  than  existence  or  existence 
than   reality,    etc.     Now   one   may   undoubtedly   define    these 


364        ^  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

terms  as  different;  for  instance,  one  might  use  existence  to  mean 
physical  reality,  subsistence  to  mean  conceptual  reality,  or 
psychical,  etc  ,  etc.  Different  regions  in  the  universe  may  be 
thus  marked  out.  But  one  of  these  is  as  real  as  another.  The 
question,  whether  an  apparition  is  real,  is  truly  the  question, 
whether  it  is  physical ;  whether,  that  is,  it  has  potencies  and  con- 
nections which  affect,  or  are  affected  by,  the  other  things  we  call 
physical.  We  never  genuinely  raise  the  question,  whether  any- 
thing is  real ;  but  rather,  whether  it  belongs  in  this  or  that  context. 
The  result  of  taking  metaphysics  to  be  the  search  for  ultimate 
reality — even  apart  from  gratuitious  troubles  and  profitless 
distinctions, — is  that  it  becomes  an  abstract,  indifferent  sort  of 
pursuit.  Reality  is,  at  the  narrowest,  a  very  wide  genus;  and  a 
definition  of  it  always  does,  and  I  think  always  must,  have  no 
bearing  upon  the  species  within  that  genus.  Still  less  does  it 
connect  with  the  subspecies  and  the  particulars.  If  reality 
means,  say,  independence,  or  percipi,  or  object  of  will,  or  stimulus, 
etc.,  the  question  so  far  remains  untouched,  how  there  come  to  be 
different  independent  objects,  different  percepts,  various  sorts 
of  will-objects,  etc.  The  difficulty  Plato  had  in  deriving  the 
subspecies  and  the  individuals  from  the  Ideas,  has  been  repeated 
without  cessation,  in  the  protracted  efforts  of  philosophers  to 
get  from  their  definitions  of  Being  an  understanding  of  the  things 
that  have  it.  The  metaphysical  ultimate  has  no  discernible 
effect  upon  the  details,  the  particularities,  to  which  it  applies. 
Now  reality  is  a  genus  and  a  whole  (or  an  Individual  if  you  wish) 
but  it  is  also  composed  of  parts  and  specifications;  and  a  philos- 
ophy which  seeks  to  know  but  the  former  of  these  is  only  a  half- 
philosophy.  That  our  professional  thinkers  today  should  be 
contented  with  any  principle  which  is  so  abstract  and  fruitless, 
is,  one  cannot  but  fear,  a  sign  of  enfeebled  interest  in  reality. 
Reality  is  not  an  abstraction,  but  is  things,  relations,  universals, 
etc.  These  are  reality,  and  all  these  are  real.  Reality,  in  fact, 
is  as  such  and  qtia  real,  naught  that  is  unique  or  investigable ; 
so  our  view  has  taught  us.  Let  us  drop  the  abstract  meta- 
physics and  return  to  the  study  of  the  principles  that  govern  the 
things  that  are.  W.  H.  Sheldon. 

Dartmouth  College. 


REALISTIC  ASPECTS  OF  ROYCE'S  LOGIC 

'T^HAT  ultimately  a  realistic  position  is  taken  in  philosophy, 
-*-  even  when  one  attempts  the  opposite,  and  that  this 
Realism  is  not  limited  to  the  acceptance  alone  of  an  existential 
world  of  physical  and  mental  entities,  has  been,  in  the  writer's 
opinion,  exceedingly  well  shown  by  Professor  Josiah  Royce  in  an 
essay  with  the  title,  "The  Principles  of  Logic,"  in  the  volume 
entitled.  The  Encyclopedia  of  the  Philosophical  Sciences:  Logic, 
191 3.  Professor  Royce  would  probably  not  accept  this  judgment 
as  to  the  outcome  of  his  demonstrations.  However,  that  this 
judgment  is  correct  I  shall  endeavor  to  show  by  quoting  and 
discussing  certain  paragraphs.  Professor  Royce's  essay  will 
be  examined  in  this  way,  both  because  it  is  a  most  timely  and 
excellent  presentation  of  recent  results  in  the  field  of  modern 
logic,  and  because  of  what  seems  to  be  its  bearing  on  philoso- 
phical problems  and  their  solution.  The  meaning  of  the  passages 
quoted  is  not  altered  by  their  removal  from  their  context. 

The  essay  is  divided  into  three  sections.  The  last  two,  making 
up  the  greater  part  of  the  essay,  are  (p.  67)  "devoted  to  indicating 
very  summarily,  the  nature  of  a  doctrine  of  which  the  traditional 
General  or  Formal  Logic  is  but  a  part,  and,  in  fact,  a  very  sub- 
ordinate part.  To  this  doctrine  the  name  'The  Science  of 
Order '  may  be  given.  It  is  a  science  which  is  indeed  incidentally 
concerned  with  the  norms  of  the  thinking  process.  But  its 
character  as  a  normative  doctrine  is  wholly  subordinate  to  other 
features  which  make  it  of  the  most  fundamental  importance  for 
philosophy.  It  is  today  in  a  very  progressive  condition.  It  is 
in  some  notable  respects  new.  It  offers  inexhaustible  oppor- 
tunities for  future  progress." 

Defining  Applied  Logic,  or  Methodology,  as  that  "special  and 
very  extended  part  of  'Logic  as  a  Normative  Science'  which 
deals  with  the  norms  of  thought  in  their  application  to  the 
methods  used  in  various  special  sciences,"  Professor  Royce  says: 
"Methodology,  taken  in  its  usual  sense  as  a  study  of  the  norms 

365 


366  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol,  XXV. 

and  methods  of  thought  used  in  the  various  arts  and  sciences, 
is  the  mother  of  logic  taken  in  the  other  sense  hereafter  to  be 
expounded.  For  the  undertakings  of  Methodology  lead  to 
certain  special  problems,  such  as  Plato  and  Aristotle  already 
began  to  stud}',  and  such  as  recent  inquiry  makes  more  and 
more  manifold  and  important."  "They  are  problems  regarding, 
not  the  methods  by  which  the  thinker  succeeds,  nor  yet  the  norms 
of  correct  thinking  viewed  as  norms,  but  rather  the  Forms,  the 
Categories,  the  Types  of  Order,  which  characterize  any  realm  of 
objects  which  a  thinker  has  actually  succeeded  in  mastering,  or 
can  possibly  succeed  in  mastering,  by  his  methods." 

Discussing  some  of  the  solutions  of  the  problems  of  method 
as  they  have  occurred  in  the  development  of  philosophy,  he  cites 
(p.  71)  the  view  of  Plato,  that  (i)  "The  realm  of  the  Universalsor 
^  Ideas  ^  is  essentially  a  System,  whose  unity  and  order  are  of  the 
first  importance  for  the  philosopher;  (2)  Inference  is  possible 
because  truths  have  momentous  objective  Relations,  definable  pre- 
cisely in  so  far  as  the  process  of  inference  is  definable;  (3)  The 
'  Order  and  Connection'  of  our  rational  processes,  when  we  follow 
right  methods,  is  a  sort  of  copy  of  an  order  and  connection  which  the 
individual  thinker  finds,  but  does  not  make.  One  thus  sets  out  to 
formulate  the  right  method.  One  discovers,  through  this  very 
effort,  a  new  realm — a  realm  of  types,  of  forms,  of  relations.  All 
these  appear  to  be  at  least  as  real  as  the  facts  of  the  physical 
world.  And  in  Plato's  individual  opinion  they  are  far  more 
real  than  the  latter." 

Professor  Royce  then  says  (p.  72):  "We  are  not  in  the  least 
concerned  to  estimate  in  this  discussion  the  correctness  or  even 
the  historical  significance  of  the  Platonic  Metaphysic, — a  doc- 
trine thus  merely  suggested.  It  is  enough  to  note,  however, 
that  even  if  one  sets  aside  as  false  or  as  irrelevant  all  the  prin- 
cipal metaphysical  conclusions  of  Plato,  one  sees  that  in  any  case 
the  Methodology  of  the  logician,  even  in  this  early  stage  of  the 
doctrine,  inevitably  gives  rise  to  the  problem  as  to  the  rela- 
tively objective  order  and  system  of  those  objects  of  thought 
to  which  the  methodologist  appeals  when  he  formulates  his  pro- 
cedure.    The  Platonic  theory  of  Ideas,  Aristotle's  later  theory  of 


No.  3.]  REALISTIC  ASPECTS  OF  ROYCE'S  LOGIC.  367 

Forms,  the  innumerable  variations  of  the  Platonic  tradition 
which  the  subsequent  history  of  thought  contains — all  these  may 
or  may  not  be  of  use  in  formulating  a  sound  metaphysic.  But 
in  any  case  this  comes  to  light:  If  a  logician  can  indeed  formulate 
any  sound  method  at  all,  in  any  generally  valid  way,  he  can  do  so 
only  because  certain  objects  which  he  considers  when  he  thinks, 
— be  these  objects  definitions,  classes,  types,  relations,  propo- 
sitions, inferences,  numbers,  or  other  'principles,' — form  a  more 
or  less  orderly  system,  or  group  of  systems,  whose  constitution 
predetermines  the  methods  that  he  must  use  when  he  thinks.^  This 
system,  or  these  systems,  and  their  constitution,  are  in  some 
sense  more  or  less  objective.  That  is:  What  constitutes  order, 
and  what  makes  orderly  method  possible,  is  not  the  product  of 
the  thinker's  personal  and  private  caprice.  Nor  can  he '  by  taking 
thought'  willfully  alter  the  most  essential  facts  and  relations 
upon  which  his  methods  depend.  If  any  orderly  classification 
of  a  general  class  of  objects  is  possible,  then,  however  subjective 
the  choice  of  one's  principles  of  classification  may  be,  there  is 
something  about  the  general  nature  of  any  such  order  and  system 
of  genera  and  of  species, — something  which  is  the  same  for  all 
thinkers,  and  which  outlasts  private  caprices  and  changing  se- 
lections of  objects  and  of  modes  of  classification." 

And  again  Professor  Royce  says  on  the  same  point  (p.  73) : 
"Order  is  order.  System  is  system.  Amidst  all  the  variations 
of  systems  and  of  orders,  certain  general  types  and  characteristic 
relations  can  be  traced.  If  then  the  methodologist  attempts  to 
conduct  thinking  processes  in  an  orderly  way,  he  inevitably 
depends  upon  finding  in  the  objects  about  which  he  thinks  those 
features,  relations,  orderly  characters,  upon  which  the  very 
possibility  of  definite  methods  depends.  Whatever  one's 
metaphysic  may  be,  one  must  therefore  recognize  that  there  is 
something  objective  about  the  Order  both  of  our  thoughts  and 
of  the  things  concerning  which  we  think;  and  one  must  admit 
that  every  successful  Methodology  depends  upon  grasping  and 
following  some  of  the  traits  of  this  orderly  constitution  of  a  realm 
that  is  certainly  a  realm  of  facts." 

*  Italics  mine. 


368  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

In  all  these  quoted  statements  Professor  Royce  seems  to  the 
writer  to  accept  very  directly  and  unconditionally  the  objectivity, 
not  only  of  entities  that  are  ideal  and  general  and  abstract,  but 
also  of  those  that  are  logical.  Thus  he  opposes  the  dominant 
and  traditional  view  that  logic  is  'subjective,'  and  is,  in  this 
sense,  the  'art  of  thinking,'  and  that  the  'laws  of  thought' 
are  laws  of  a  psychical  process. 

From  the  quotations  given  it  would  appear  that  all  logic, 
including  the  traditional  narrow  logic  of  classes  and  of  the  syl- 
logism, is  objective,  and  is  only  one  of  the  several  types  of  order. 

There  follows,  in  Professor  Royce's  essay,  an  exposition  of 
some  of  the  most  important  features  of  The  New  Logic,  es- 
pecially as  this  includes  'Order- types.'  In  these  sections  such 
subjects  as  Relations  and  their  'Logical  Properties,'  Classes, 
Series,  the  Correlation  of  Series,  Functions,  and,  finally,  'The 
Logical  Genesis  of  the  Types  of  Order,'  are  presented  in  consider- 
able detail,  and  the  following  interesting  statements,  bearing 
upon  specific  points,  are  made  (p.  97):  "Relations  are  of  such 
importance  as  they  are  for  the  theory  of  order,  mainly  because, 
in  certain  cases,  they  are  subject  to  exact  laws  which  permit  of  a 
wide  range  of  deductive  inference.  To  some  of  these  laws 
attention  must  be  at  once  directed.  They  enable  us  to  classify 
relations  according  to  various  logical  properties.  Upon  such 
properties  of  relations  all  deductive  science  depends.  The  doctrine 
of  the  Norms  of  deductive  reasoning  is  simply  the  doctrine  of  these 
relational  properties  when  they  are  viewed  as  lawful  characteristics 
of  relations  which  can  guide  us  in  making  inferences,  and  thus 
Logic  as  the  'Normative  Science'  of  deductive  inference  is  merely 
an  incidental  part  of  the  Theory  of  Order."  Thus  the  implicative 
relation,  the  progressive  discovery  or  guidance  of  which  is  iden- 
tical with,  or  accompanies  our  correct  reasoning  processes,  is 
held  to  be  objective.  Reasoning,  as  defined  in  this  manner,  has 
its  conditions.  Did  these  not  subsist,  there  might  still  be  a 
'world,'  and  this  'world'  might  be  knowable,  but  we  could  not 
reason  about  it.  For,  says  Professor  Royce  (p.  107):  "Without 
objects  conceived  as  unique  individuals,  we  can  have  no  Classes. 
Without  classes  we  can,  as  we  have  seen,  define  no  Relations, 


No.  3.]  REALISTIC  ASPECTS  OF  ROYCKS  LOGIC.  369 

without  relations  we  can  have  no  Order.  But  to  be  reasonable 
is  to  conceive  of  order-systems,  real  or  ideal.  Therefore,  we  have 
an  absolute  logical  need  to  conceive  of  individual  objects  as  the  ele- 
ments of  our  ideal  order-systems.^^ 

With  all  this,  excepting  only  a  seemingly  implied  dependence 
of  the  individuality  of  'individuals'  upon  their  being  conceived 
as  such,  I  can  agree.  But  at  this  point,  as  in  other  places. 
Professor  Royce  seems  to  retract  his  earlier  introductory  asser- 
tions of  the  objectivity  of  the  logical  situation,  and  to  color  these 
now  with  an  idealistic  tinge.  He  introduces  the  thin  edge  of  a 
wedge  for  his  idealism  even  more  noticeably,  but  quite  as  unne- 
cessarily, in  the  statement  (p.  108)  that  "  Apart  from  some  classi- 
fying will,  our  world  contains  no  classes."  One  may  very  well  ask, 
then:  How  about  the  class  of  Wills  that  classify"?  Is  this,  as  a  class 
of  individual  wills  or  will-acts  that  are  related  and  so  ordered  in  a 
certain  way,  itself  dependent  upon  a  classifying  will?  And,  if  not, 
may  not  other  classes,  and  the  individuals,  the  relations,  and  the 
order,  by  virtue  of  which  they  subsist  as  classes,  be  equally  inde- 
pendent of  a  classifying  will,  although  related  to  it? 

Professor  Royce's  'proof  or  demonstration  that  Individual, 
Relation,  and  Class  are  'the  Forms,'  or  Categories,  that  "char- 
acterize any  realm  of  objects  which  a  thinker  has  actually  suc- 
ceeded in  mastering,  or  can  possibly  succeed  in  mastering," 
is  contained  in  the  Section  on  "The  Logical  Genesis  of  the  Types 
of  Order."  His  proof  is  the  familiar  one  of  finding  that  a  propo- 
sition is  'presupposed  by  its  own  denial.'  But  in  applying  this 
test  or  criterion  he  again  seems  to  pass  from  the  earlier  ac- 
knowledged objectivity  of  logical  entities  to  a  somewhat  surrep- 
titious introduction  of  an  idealism  that  does  away  with  this. 
Professor  Royce's  demonstration  and  the  principle  on  which  he 
makes  it  can  be  granted  in  the  specific  instance  chosen.  But 
one  cannot  allow  either  the  limitation  of  the  principle  to  this 
instance  or  the  conclusions  which  he  draws  from  this  specific 
demonstration.  Some  of  the  main  points  of  his  demonstration 
are  as  follows  (p.  131): 

"  (i)  To  any  'mode  of  action,'  such  as  'to  sing'  or  'sing- 
ing'  (expressed  in  English  either  by  the  infinitive  or  by  the 


370  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

present  participle  of  the  verb)  there  corresponds  a  mode  of  action, 
which  is  the  contradictory  of  the  first,  for  example  'not  to  sing' 
or  'not  singing.'  ,Thus,  in  this  realm,  to  every  x  there  corre- 
sponds one,  and  essentially  only  one,  ac." 

"(2)  Any  pair  of  modes  of  action,  such  for  instance  as  'sing- 
ing' and  'dancing,'  have  their  'logical  product,'  precisely  as 
classes  have  a  product,  and  their  'logical  sum,'  again,  precisely 
as  the  classes  possess  a  sum.  Thus  the  'mode  of  action'  ex- 
pressed by  the  phrase:  'To  sing  and  to  dance'  is  the  logical  prod- 
uct of  the  'modes  of  action,'  'to  sing'  and  'to  dance.'  The  mode 
of  action  expressed  by  the  phrase,  'Either  to  sing  or  to  dance,' 
is  the  logical  sum  of  'to  sing'  and  'to  dance.'  These  logical 
operations  of  addition  and  multiplication  depend  upon  triadic 
relations  of  modes  of  action,  precisely  analogous  to  the  triadic 
relation  of  classes.  So  then,  to  any  x  and  y,  in  this  realm,  there 
correspond  xy  and  x  +  y." 

"  (3)  Between  any  two  modes  of  action  a  certain  dyadic,  transi- 
tive and  not  totally  non-symmetrical  relation  may  either  obtain 
or  not  obtain.  This  relation  may  be  expressed  by  the  verb  *  im- 
plies.' It  has  precisely  the  same  rational  properties  as  the  rela- 
tion <  of  one  class  or  proposition  to  another.  Thus  the  mode  of 
action  expressed  by  the  phrase,  'To  sing  and  to  dance,"  implies 
the  mode  of  action  expressed  by  the  phrase  'to  sing.'  In  other 
words  'Singing  and  dancing,'  implies  'singing.'" 

"  (4)  There  is  a  mode  of  action  which  may  be  symbolized  by  a  0. 
This  mode  of  action  may  be  expressed  in  language  by  the  phrase, 
'to  do  nothing,'  or  'doing  nothing.'  There  is  another  mode  of 
action  which  may  be  symbolized  by  i.  This  is  the  mode  of 
action  expressed  in  language  by  the  phrase  'to  do  something,' 
that  is,  to  act  positively  in  any  way  whatever  which  involves 
'no/  doing  nothing.^  The  modes  of  action  0  and  i  are  contra- 
dictories each  of  the  other." 

Professor  Royce  finds  further  (p.  134): 

"(i)  That  the  members,  elements,  or  'modes  of  action'  which 
constitute  this  logically  necessary  system  S  exist  in  sets  both 
finite  and  infinite  in  number,  and  both  in  'dense'  series,  in 
'continuous'  series,  and  in  fact  in  all  possible  serial  types." 


No.  3.]  REALISTIC  ASPECTS  OF  ROYCE'S  LOGIC.  37 1 

"  (2)  That  such  systems  as  the  whole  number  series,  the  series 
of  the  rational  numbers,  the  real  numbers,  etc.,  consequently 
enter  into  the  constitution  of  this  system.  The  arithmetical 
continuum,  for  instance,  is  a  part  of  the  system  S." 

"  (3)  That  this  system  also  includes  in  its  complexities  all  the 
types  of  order  which  appear  to  be  required  by  the  at  present 
recognized  geometrical  theories,  projective  and  metrical." 

In  conclusion,  Professor  Royce  arrives  at  a  position  which  he 
calls  'Absolute  Pragmatism,' and  which  he  holds  "differs  from 
that  of  the  pragmatists  now  most  in  vogue."  He  says  (p.  121)  : 
"There  are  some  truths  that  are  known  to  us  7iot  by  virtue  of 
the  special  successes  which  this  or  that  hypothesis  obtains  in 
particular  instances,  but  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that  there  are 
certain  modes  of  activity,  certain  laws  of  the  rational  world,  which 
we  reinstate  and  verify,  through  the  very  act  of  attempting  to  pre- 
suppose that  these  modes  of  activity  do  not  exist,  or  that  these  laws 
are  not  valid.  Thus,  whoever  says  that  there  are  no  classes 
whatever  in  his  world,  inevitably  classifies.  Whoever  asserts 
that  for  him  there  are  no  real  relations,  and  that,  in  particular 
the  logical  relation  between  affirmation  and  denial  does  not  exist, 
so  that  for  him  yes  means  the  same  as  no, — on  the  one  hand 
himself  asserts  and  denies,  and  so  makes  the  difference  between 
yes  and  no,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  asserts  the  existence  of  a 
relational  sameness  even  in  denying  the  difTerence  between  yes 
and  no." 

"  In  brief,  whatever  actions  are  such,  whatever  types  of  actions  are 
such,  whatever  results  of  activity,  whatever  conceptual  constructions 
are  such,  that  the  very  act  of  getting  rid  of  them,  or  of  thinking 
them  away,  logically  implies  their  presence,  are  known  to  us  indeed 
both  empirically  and  pragmatically;  but  they  are  also  absolute. 
And  any  account  which  succeeds  in  telling  what  they  are  has  absolute 
truth.  Such  truth  is  a  ^construction^  or  ' creation,^  for  activity 
determines  its  nature.     It  is  'found '  for  we  observe  it  when  we  act." 

With  the  general  tenor  of  Professor  Royce's  essay  I  am  in 
closest  sympathy,  and  it  is  only  to  certain  restrictions  and  con- 
clusions that  exception  must  be  taken.  One  can  accept  even  the 
specific  instance    which  the    application  of    'proof  by  denial' 


372  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

furnishes,  namely,  that  the  'modes  of  action'  'to  assert'  and 
'to  deny'  are  themselves  instances  which  conform  to  and  pre- 
suppose the  logic  of  classes,  of  relations,  of  logical  products,  of 
series,  etc.  However,  to  the  author  of  this  book  this  is  not  proof 
for  the  idealistically  tinged  conclusion,  that  this  logic  is  in  some 
way  created  by  'will,'  for  example,  by  the  will  'to  assert'  and 
*to  deny,'  or  that  individuals,  classes,  relations,  order,  etc.,  are 
in  some  way  dependent  on  'will.'  This  idealistic  tendency  is 
exhibited  in  the  statement,  previously  quoted,  that  'Apart  from 
some  classifying  will,  our  world  contains  no  classes.' 

Modes  of  action  such  as  are  those  of  willing,  of  affirming  and 
denying, — and  especially  of  finding  that  denial  presupposes  the 
very  thing  denied,  may  indeed  present  a  specific  existential  case 
of  entities  that  are  individual,  are  similiar,  form  classes  with 
sub-classes,  have  logical  products,  etc.,  and  form  series  that  are 
infinite,  and  either  discontinuous,  dense,  or  continuous.  But  this 
does  not  imply  that  any  of  these  generic  entities  as  such,  or  that  any 
instance  of  them,  such  as  the  real  numbers,  points,  and  physical 
objects,  is  created  by  'will,''  or  dependent  on  it. 

The  ground  for  this  assertion  is  the  generally  recognized  prin- 
ciple, accepted  by  Professor  Royce  himself,  that  if  there  is  one 
'instance,'  it  is  always  a  permissible  hypothesis  that  there  are 
others.  Perhaps,  indeed,  'instance'  means  or  implies  just  this 
possibility.  It  follows,  that,  if  there  is  one  'instance,'  namely, 
of  acts  of  'will'  which  form  classes,  series,  etc.,  that  the  possi- 
bilities cannot  be  denied  (i)  that  there  are  other  instances  of 
these  generic  entities^awc:?  (2)  that  these  generic  entities  themselves 
also  are,  that  is,  have  being.  However,  if  there  are  these  possi- 
bilities, there  are  also  the  further  ones,  (3)  not  only  that  these 
other  instances  of  individuals,  classes,  series,  etc.,  may  be  in- 
dependent of  that  particular  series  which  is  identical  with  acts 
of  will,  but  also  (4)  that  the  generic  entities,  class,  series,  etc. 
may  be  similarly  independent.  In  fact,  this  independence  of 
'other  instances'  is  itself  identical  with  that  of  the  generic 
entities.  But  in  any  case,  even  with  only  the  possibility  implied, 
that  there  are  other  instances  of  series  than  the  will-series,  it  is 
logically  prohibited  to  infer  the  dependence,  either  of  these  other 


No.  3.]  REALISTIC  ASPECTS  OF  ROYCE'S  LOGIC.  373 

instances,  or  of  the  generic  entities,  on  the  will-series  itself.  The 
opportunity  for  their  independence  is  quite  as  good  as  for  the  op- 
posite. Such  an  independence  is  quite  compatible  with  a  relatedness 
of  both  specific  and  generic  entities  to  will,  to  reasoning,  or  to 
knowing,  and  means  the  objectivity  both  of  the  general  logical 
entities,  class,  individual,  series,  etc.,  and  of  all  instances  of 
them. 

However,  one  can  find  not  only  that  this  hypothesis  of  the 
objectivity  of  logical  entities  and  principles  is  permissible  and 
that  it  is  confirmed  by  empirical  Investigation,  but  also  that 
Professor  Royce  himself  really  presents  no  obstacles  to  its 
acceptance  as  confirmed.  For  the  very  logical  principles  which 
this  author  himself  elucidates  and  accepts,  if  they  are  applied 
to  the  specific  situation  under  discussion,  themselves  demand  this 
conclusion.     This  can  be  shown  as  follows: 

Professor  Royce  makes  a  number  of  statements  to  the 
effect  that  'rational  will,'  'modes  of  action,'  'reasoning,'  'the 
making  of  conceptual  constructions,'  and  'the  getting  rid  of 
them,'  etc.,  each  'presuppose'  or  'logically'  imply  that  logic 
which  is  identical  with  classes  of  individuals  that  stand  in  one  or 
another,  or  in  many,  of  several  relationships,  and  that  form  one 
of  the  several  kinds  of  series,  etc. 

Although  neither  'presuppose'  nor  'imply'  is  defined  by 
Professor  Royce,  each  of  these  entities  is,  by  his  own  logic  (at 
least)  a  relation.  This  is  the  case,  first,  because  the  distinction 
is  made  between  the  act  of  'rational  activity'  (will  to  reason, 
etc.)  and  that  which  this  activity  presupposes  or  logically 
implies,  namely,  individuals,  classes,  etc.  'Presupposer'  and 
'presupposed'  are,  then,  at  least  two.  But,  secondly,  a  relation 
is  defined  (p.  96)  as  "a  character  that  an  object  possesses  as 
a  member  of  a  collection  (a  pair,  a  triad,  etc.),  and  which  would 
not  belong  to  that  object,  were  it  not  such  a  member."  We 
must  conclude,  then,  that  since  'presupposer'  and  'presup- 
posed' are  two,  they  are  related,  and  that  'presuppose'  and 
'imply'  are  the  relations  present. 

The  next  important  question  is.  Can  that  which  is  presupposed 
or  implied  be  related  to,  and  yet  be  independent  of   the  'pre- 


374  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

supposer'  or  'implier'?  Again  Professor  Royce  gives  us  the 
materials  for  an  answer.  In  his  presentation  of  the  several 
classes  of  relations  as  dyadic,  triadic,  symmetrical  and  non- 
symmetrical, transitive  and  intransitive,  etc.,  he  says  (p.  99): 
^^Transitivity  and  symmetry  are  mutually  independent  relational 
characters''  This  independence  is  then  exhibited  by  finding 
instances  of  the  one  character  without  the  other.  Thus  the 
relation  of  'greater  than,' symbolized  by  >,is  transitive,  since, 
if  .4  >  ^  and  B  >  C,  A  >  C\  but  it  is  totally  non-symmetrical, 
since,  \i  A  >  B,  this  precludes  B  >  A.  Likewise  the  relation 
'father  of  {A  is  'father  of  B)  is  also  non-symmetrical,  yet  it 
is  non-transitive,  since,  if  A  is  father  of  B,  and  B  is  father  of  C, 
A  is  precluded  from  being  father  of  C\  the  relation  'father  of 
does  not  'go'  from  A  to  C.  'Ancestor  of  is,  however,  both 
non-symmetrical  and  transitive.  Thus,  for  example,  are  sym- 
metry and  transitivity  demonstrated  to  be,  in  Professor  Royce 's 
own  words,  'independent  relational  characters.'  In  any  case 
by  the  principles  previously  stated,  since  these  characters  are 
two,  that  is,  a  pair,  they  are  related:  and  now  they  are  proved  to 
be  independent.  Therefore  it  follows,  in  at  least  one  case,  that 
relatedness  and  independence  are  quite  consistent,  and  co-subsist. 

Here  again  it  must  be  said,  that,  if  there  is  one  instance  of  such 
compatibility,  there  may  be  others,  and  that  in  no  case  does 
relatedness  merely  of  itself  imply,  necessitate,  or  carry  with  it, 
dependence;  nor  independence,  non-relatedness.  Just  such 
another  instance,  however,  may  be  the  important  relation,  just 
discussed,  of  'presupposition'  or  'implication.'  That  which 
is  presupposed  or  implied,  namely  the  logic  of  order,  etc.,  may 
be  related  to  and  yet  be  independent  of  that  which  presupposes 
or  implies  it,  namely,  that  very  rational  activity  which  Professor 
Royce  emphasizes  so  much. 

With  this  the  case,  one  certainly  cannot  justifiably  assert 
that  (p.  169)  "our  world  contains  classes"  only  because  there  is 
is  the  will  to  classify.  One  cannot  in  this  manner  logically 
maintain  a  'synthetic  union*  of  'creation'  and  'discovery.' 

However,  in  order  to  confirm  empirically  this  hypothesis,  that 
independence  and  relatedness  are  quite  compatible.   Professor 


No.  3.]  REALISTIC  ASPECTS  OF  ROYCE'S  LOGIC.  375 

Royce  himself  need  only  have  found,  if  possible,  another  class 
and  series  of  individuals  which  bears  the  same  relation  (that  of 
being  '  reviewed ')  to  his  own  investigating  mind  as  do  his  own 
rational  modes  of  action.  Professor  Royce  discovers  in  these, 
quite  as  Descartes  found  that  either  to  deny  or  to  assert  conscious- 
ness is  to  presuppose  it,  a  relation  that  generates  a  series.  He 
finds  that  to  review  a  mode  of  action  is  itself  a  mode  of  action, 
and  implies  its  possible  reviewal  in  another  mode  of  action  and 
so  on,  in  an  infinite  series.  Further,  this  series  is  found  to  be 
generated  by  an  asymmetrical  transitive  relation,  and  is  either 
discontinuous,  dense,  or  continuous.  However,  each  member  of 
the  series  is,  as  Professor  Royce  himself  admits  (p.  153)  "dis- 
tinct," and  sooner  or  later  there  is  that  member  of  the  series  which 
discovers,  or  is  identical  with  the  discovery  of,  the  serial  characters 
of  the  whole.  It  is  shown  by  the  subsequent  study  of  this  series, 
that,  if  any  specific  member  drop  out,  especially  any  so-called 
first  or  last  member,  the  series  is  no  less  serial  or  ordered.  The 
series  is  both  related  to,  and  yet  independent  of  any  member  that 
can  thus  'drop  out.'  Thus  that  very  serial  character  of  the 
'modes  of  action,'  which  Professor  Royce,  in  order  to  support 
his  Idealism,  would  show  is  created  by  and  depends  upon  the 
'will  to  act,'  is  implied  by  his  own  logic  to  be  independent  of 
that  individual  act  or  member  in  which  it  is  discovered. 

But  further,  that  there  are  other  series  than  the  modes  of  action 
called  '  reviewing,' '  noting,'  etc.,  is  also  admitted,  at  least  tacitly. 
For  our  author  accepts  and  explains  at  some  length  the  correlation 
of  series  and  the  functional  relationship.  Then,  at  least,  there 
must  be  series  to  be  correlated,  say,  by  a  one-one  relation,  and 
each  series  is  distinct  from  the  other.  But,  related,  they  are  also 
in  their  distinctness  or  bare  'twoness'  independent.  For,  if 
there  must  be  at  least  two  entities  as  the  condition  for  a  relation, 
then  this  relation  cannot  in  turn  generate  or  condition  this 
minimum  of  diversity. 

We  thus  reach,  finally,  an  important  conclusion  of  direct 
bearing  on  the  problem  of  the  character  of  the  relationship 
between  'knowing  process'  and  'entity  known,'  whether  this 
be  existential  or  subsistential,  generic  or  specific,  concrete  or 


Z7^  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

logical  and  formal,  physical  or  mental.  First,  there  are  other 
manifolds  than  that  of  the  series  of  rational  will-acts.  This  is 
implied  by  the  possibility  of  series  being  correlated.  With  this 
the  case,  there  must  be  at  least  two  series.  But  the  manifold 
of  will-acts  is  a  series.  Then  there  must  be  other  series  with 
which  this  is  in  correlation.  Briefly,  we  must  conclude,  that 
other  manifolds  are,  or  have  being,  and  second,  that  these  other 
manifolds  involve  one,  some,  or  all  of  the  logical  principles  that 
does  the  series  of  rational  will-acts.  Third,  as  'other  than' 
and  numerically  distinct  from  this  series,  these  other  series  are 
both  independent  of,  and  yet  related  to  it,  just  as  the  series  of 
one's  own  rational  'modes  of  action'  (Professor  Royce's  for 
example)  are  both  related  to,  and  independent  of  that  specific 
mode  which  is  the  act  of  discovery.  Finally,  there  is  at  least  the 
possibility  that  all  of  these  ordered  manifolds  should  be  related 
to  each  other,  and  yet  be  distinct,  not  identical  with,  and  in- 
dependent of  each  other. 

This  four-fold  conclusion  presents  one  of  the  most  important 
parts  of  that  modern  logical  doctrine  which  is  called  Logical 
Pluralism.  It  is  the  direct  opposite  of  that  tendency  which 
Professor  Royce  supports,  at  least  towards  the  close  of  his  essay, 
namely.  Logical  Monism.  These  two  positions  together  center 
on  what  is  perhaps  the  most  important  problem  in  philosophical 
methodology,  that,  namely,  of  the  compatibility  of  independence 
and  relatedness.  The  one  answer  to  this  problem.  Logical 
Monism,  has,  whether  it  be  true  or  false,  conditioned  logically 
the  majority  of  the  great  orthodox  philosophical  systems  down 
to  the  present  time.  It  is  an  answer  that  is  itself  conditioned 
historically  and  psychologically  in  the  Aristotelian  tradition. 
The  other  answer,  Logical  Pluralism,  has  had  its  forebodings, 
now  and  then,  also  all  through  philosophical  development,  but 
its  roots  strike  deepest  into  that  fertile  soil  for  logical  research 
which  is  furnished  by  the  relatively  recent  development  of  the 
empirical  sciences,  including  mathematics.  Only  of  late  has 
this  tradition  and  tendency  come,  as  it  were,  to  self-conscious- 
ness, and  its  logic  been  formulated.  Professor  Royce's  essay 
forms  a  notable  contribution  to  the  formulation  and  emphasis 


No.  3.]  REALISTIC  ASPECTS  OF  ROYCE'S  LOGIC.  377 

of  the  importance  of  this  new  logic  or  'Science  of  Order,'  as  it 
may  be  called.  Indeed  this  long  discussion  of  Professor  Royce's 
essay  has  been  ventured  because  of  its  recognition  of  '  the  inex- 
haustible opportunities  for  future  progress,'  both  in  philosophy 
and  in  science,  through  investigations  in  this  new  field.  Not  so 
much  along  the  line  of  continuing  to  use  the  traditional  logic,  as  in 
philosophizing  in  accordance  with  the  new  logic,  is  there  the 
possibility  of  philosophical  advance  in  the  future;  not  so  much 
by  studying  substance  and  causation,  mere  classes,  and  the 
relations  of  exclusion  and  inclusion,  will  real  problems  be  solved, 
as  by  examining  the  various  types  and  the  properties  of  relations 
and  series,  the  correlations  of  series  or  functions,  and  the  nature 
of  implication  and  presupposition.  The  one  procedure  is  full 
of  promise ;  but  the  other  would  almost  seem  to  have  exhausted 
its  possibilities. 

E.  G.  Spaulding. 

Princeton  University. 


NEO-REALISM    AND    THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    ROYCE. 

'T^HE  object  of  the  following  brief  considerations  is  not  to 
-*-  pass  judgment  on  the  value  of  either  of  the  two  philosophies 
under  discussion,  but  rather  to  suggest  a  point  of  view  from  which 
their  agreements  and  differences  may  appear  somewhat  more  sig- 
nificant than  they  usually  appear  to  those  who  approach  phi- 
losophy from  the  exclusively  epistemologic  interest. 

If  economy  of  thought  be,  as  Mach  and  others  have  it,  one 
of  the  main  objects  of  science,  then  philosophic  labels  like  Realism, 
and  Idealism,  are  among  the  most  useful  instruments  of  thought. 
But  to  those  who  care  for  accuracy,  these  labels  appear  as  snares 
and  stones  of  stumbling — they  are  apt  to  hide  from  us  the  im- 
portant differences  which  separate  many  of  those  who  call  them- 
selves idealists,  and  the  more  important  bonds  which  connect 
realists  and  idealists.  Vital  philosophic  achievements,  we  all 
know,  do  not  grow  out  of  the  effort  to  spin  out  the  consequences 
of  simple  formulae  such  as  those  which  sum  up  the  distinction 
between  realism  and  idealism,  though  such  formulae  may  have  a 
decisive  influence  in  giving  direction  and  form  to  the  effort  after 
coherency  and  system  which  is  at  the  heart  of  philosophy. 
While  philosophy,  like  law,  must  of  necessity  always  strive  after 
consistency,  it  is  true  as  a  matter  of  fact  that  it  never  completely 
attains  its  goal.  The  very  effort  after  coherency  and  system  is 
conditioned  for  any  genuine  philosophy  by  its  starting  point, 
the  actual  complex  of  intellectual  needs  growing  out  of  the  ma- 
terial of  the  philosopher's  world  of  experience.  If  this  be  so, 
then  the  suggestion  naturally  arises,  that  the  fact  that  both  neo- 
realism  and  the  philosophy  of  Royce  endeavor  to  assimilate  the 
general  results  of  modern  logical  and  mathematical  studies,  may 
be  more  significant  than  the  attempt  to  condense  the  whole  of 
Royce's  philosophy  into  the  dictum  that  the  Absolute  is  the 
locus  of  all  our  meanings,  or  neo-realism  into  the  doctrine  that 
objects  are  independent  of  our  knowledge.  The  fundamental 
differences  between  neo-realism  and  the  philosophy  of  Royce 

378 


NEO-REALISM  AND  PHILOSOPHY  OF  ROYCE.  379 

can  from  this  point  of  view  be  traced  to  their  respective  attitudes 
to  the  problems  of  religion. 

The  systematic  neglect  of  mathematics  on  the  part  of  all  great 
influential  philosophies  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  obvious  on 
the  must  cursory  survey.  Fichte,  Schelling,  Hegel,  Schopenhauer, 
Lotze,  Mill,  Hamilton,  Green,  Cousin,  Comte,^  Rosmini,  all  show 
how  social,  theologic,  and  psychologic  interests  absorbed  all 
attention.  Philosophers  like  Bolzano  or  Cournot  who  took  the 
philosophic  importance  of  mathematics  seriously,  were  assigned 
to  obscurity.  Now  in  intellectual  affairs,  it  is  difficult  to  say 
which  is  the  cause  and  which  the  effect.  But  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  neglect  of  mathematics  and  the  prevalence  of 
nominalism  and  atomism,  were  intimately  connected.  This 
can  be  seen  perhaps  most  clearly  in  Mill's  logic  in  which  the 
emphasis  on  particular  'facts,'  'states'  of  mind,  leads  to  the 
complete  degradation  of  deduction  (and  consequently  of  all 
exact  mathematics)  as  a  source  of  truth .^  At  any  rate,  whether 
we  take  the  phenomenalistic  idealism  which  comes  to  Mill  from 
Hume,  the  so-called  objective  idealism  of  the  Hegelian  school  of 
Green  and  Caird,  or  the  practical  idealism  of  the  Neo-Kantians, 
we  find  them  all  assuming  that  the  world  which  is  our  starting 
point  is  a  brute,  disconnected  manifold ;  and  while  these  philoso- 
phies differ  in  the  method  by  which  the  initial  atomism  is  over- 
come, they  all  regard  the  connections  or  relations  of  things  as  a 
contribution  of  'the  mind'  to  the  world. 

Now  it  would  take  us  far  afield  to  indicate  all  the  difficulties 
resulting  from  the  assumption  that  mathematical  relations  or 
entities  like  numbers,  are  mental.  But  it  is  clear  that  this  view 
throws  no  light  at  all  on  the  peculiarities  of  mathematical  pro- 
cedure which  distinguishes  it  from  physics  or  psychology. 
When  a  mathematician  is  investigating  the  property  of  a  given 
equation  or  curve,  it  is  precisely  as  fitting  to  tell  him  that  he  is 
looking  for  the  product  of  his  own  creation  as  it  would  have  been 

1 1  include  Comte  because  though  brought  up  on  mathematical  physics,  his 
whole  philosophy  was  controlled  by  practical  demands — due  to  the  influence  of 
St.  Simon. 

2  The  exaggerated  importance  attached  to  Mill  over  and  above  more  fruitful 
logicians  like  De  Morgan  and  Boole,  would  not  have  been  possible  if  philosophers 
had  paid  more  attention  to  mathematics. 


38o  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

to  have  told  Leverier  and  Adams  that  in  looking  for  Neptune 
they  were  looking  for  the  product  of  their  own  mind.  Hence, 
when  philosophy  could  no  longer  ignore  the  progress  of  mathe- 
matics and  symbolic  logic,  there  was  bound  to  be  a  reaction 
against  the  traditional  idealism  and  a  preference  for  the  type  of 
realism  that  followed  in  Greece  close  on  the  first  discovery  of 
mathematical  method.  Russell's  Principles  of  Mathematics  and 
the  chapter  in  his  Problems  of  Philosophy  dealing  with  Plato's 
Doctrine  of  Ideas,  seem  to  me  still  the  most  significant  expression 
of  the  new  yet  essentially  Platonic  realism.^  There  have,  to  be 
sure,  been  other  motives  for  neo-realism  besides  the  mathematical 
one,  e.  g.,  the  natural  reaction  against  the  sweeping  claims  of 
psychologism,  expressed  with  such  admirable  self-control  by 
von  Meinong.  But  it  is  significant  to  note  that  the  one  doctrine 
which  all  the  six  authors  of  Neo-realism  press  in  their  book  is  the 
non-mental  character  of  logical  and  mathematical  entities.  In 
thus  emphasizing  the  objectivity  of  the  relational  structure  of 
the  real  world,  neo-realism  takes  itself  completely  out  of  the 
scope  of  Professor  Royce's  dialectical  objections  against  realism, 
which  will  be  found  on  close  examination  to  be  all  arguments 
against  dualistic  or  atomistic  realism  that  is  incompatible  with 
the  linkage  of  facts. 

The  realistic  arguments  as  to  the  nature  of  mathematics  were 
first  advanced  by  Royce  in  the  two  volumes  of  The  World  and  the 
Individual,  several  years  before  the  appearance  of  Russell's 
Principles  of  Mathematics.  The  mathematician,  we  are  told,  is 
as  much  a  student  of  given  facts  as  is  the  chemist  or  business  man. 
He  is  "as  faithful  a  watcher  as  the  astronomer  alone  with  his 
star"  (I,  p.  256).  The  result  of  his  observations  abound  in  the 
unexpected  as  much  as  do  the  facts  of  any  other  field  of  research. 
To  be  sure  Royce  adds  that  what  the  mathematician  watches  is 
in  a  sense  the  result  of  his  own  play  or  activity;  but  this  "sense" 
is  made  clear  by  the  example  of  the  diagram.  The  mathematician 
makes  his  diagram  or  set  of  postulates,  but  he  cannot  wilfully 
alter  the  consequences  which  alone  are,  after  all,  the  specifically 

^  For  further  indications  of  this  I  may  here  refer  to  my  paper  on  the  Present 
Situation  in  the  Philosophy  of  Mathematics  (1910),  and  to  the  review  of  Neo- 
Realism,  Journal  of  Phil.,  VIII,  533  ff.  and  X,  197. 


No.  3.]        NEO-REALISM  AND  PHILOSOPHY  OF  ROYCE.  38 1 

mathematical  facts.  You  may  call  the  spirit  from  the  deep  but 
you  cannot  control  his  actions  after  you  have  called  him.^  This 
purely  realistic  account  of  mathematics  is  developed  in  Professor 
Royce's  address  on  "The  Sciences  of  the  Ideal"  (read  before  the 
St.  Louis  Congress)  in  the  monograph  on  the  Relation  of  the 
Principles  of  Logic  to  the  Foundations  of  Geometry,  and  his 
essay  on  "Logic"  in  volume  entitled  the  Encyclopedia  of  the 
Philosophical  Sciences.  The  fruitful  character  of  deductive 
reasoning  as  a  source  of  truth  appears  even  in  his  Sources  of 
Religious  Insight  (pp.  88ff.). 

To  those  who  view  Royce's  philosophy  as  a  type  of  Neo- 
Hegelianism  this  attention  to  mathematics  may  appear  as  an 
introjected  episode.  (Royce's  first  introduction  of  mathematical 
considerations  in  the  World  and  the  Individual  caused  consider- 
able surprise  and  misgiving  doubts  among  idealists.)  But 
those  who  have  had  the  good  fortune  of  membership  in  his  logic 
seminar  have  learned  how  characteristic  of  his  thought  is  the 
complete  objectivity  of  all  logical  and  mathematical  considera- 
tions. The  truth  is  that  a  careful  survey  of  the  whole  corpus 
of  Professor  Royce's  writings  fully  bears  out  his  contention,  in  the 
preface  to  the  Problems  of  Christianity,  that  his  philosophy  is  not 
in  any  true  sense  Hegelian.  Such  a  survey  seems  to  me  to  show 
how  profoundly  Royce's  philosophy  has  been  influenced,  not  only 
by  the  Kantian  doctrine  of  the  primacy  of  the  practical  reason ,2 
but  also  by  the  metaphysic  of  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason.  For 
whatever  may  be  our  objections  to  the  Kantian  metaphysics, 
we  must  not  forget  that  Kant  himself  began  as  a  mathematical 
physicist,  that  he  had  taught  mathematics  and  that  a  primary 
object  of  his  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  was  to  show  the  possibility  of 
mathematics  and  physics  as  apodeictic  sciences.     The  Kantian 

1  In  his  concept  of  a  common  world  by  means  of  the  process  of  interpretation,  in 
the  second  volume  of  the  Problem  of  Christianity,  Professor  Royce  has  suggested  a 
method  which,  if  it  can  successfully  be  carried  out,  would  overcome  the  neo-realist 
antithesis  between  finding  and  making  propositions  true.  An  adequate  discussion 
of  this,  however,  is  not  in  order  before  Professor  Royce  gives  us  a  fuller  account  of 
his  meaning. 

2  This  shows  itself  not  only  in  the  conclusion  of  his  paper  on  Kant  in  the  Jour, 
of  Spec.  Phil.,  but  also  as  the  method  of  postulates  in  Chs.  9-10  of  the  Religious 
Aspect  of  Philosophy .  In  his  general  attitude  to  the  importance  of  the  'practical' 
in  philosophy  Royce,  like  James,  has  been  profoundly  influenced  by  Lotze. 


382  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

philosophy  at  least  never  identified  the  abstract  and  the  unreal. 
At  any  rate  it  ought  to  be  noted  that  the  very  first  of  Professor 
Royce's  published  writings,  the  Primer  of  Logical  Analysis,  already 
shows  a  strong  interest  in  symbolic  logic. 

It  is,  however,  precisely  Professor  Royce's  rejection  of  the  Kant- 
ian distinction  between  possible  and  actual  experience  that  is  at 
the  basis  of  the  fundamental  divergence  between  neo-realism  and 
the  idealism  of  Royce.  This  rejection  of  the  Kantian  doctrine 
seems  to  me  to  grow  out  of  the  needs  of  natural  theology  which 
looms  so  large  in  all  of  Professor  Royce's  writings.  Religious  phi- 
losophies are  for  the  most  part  doctrines  of  hope  or  guarantees 
of  the  efficacy  of  moral  effort.  Hence  they  tend  to  assume  that 
the  object  of  our  striving  is  already  in  some  sense  actual.  This 
leads  to  the  rejection  of  all  possibility  from  the  nature  of  the 
Absolute.  The  Absolute  of  Professor  Royce's  philosophy, 
however,  differs  from  the  realistic  God  of  Aristotle.  It  is  not 
outside  of  mundane  things  but  all-inclusive;  and  this  identifica- 
tion of  the  Good  with  the  Whole  leads  to  the  familiar  difficulty 
as  to  the  problem  of  evil.  It  compels  us  to  assume  that  even 
now  the  world  is  better  or  richer  because  of  the  presence  of  vice, 
crime,  proverty,  disease  and  all  the  horrors  of  war.  Such 
philosophies  have  always  been  sources  of  strength  and  comfort 
to  many.  Nor  can  any  one  rightly  accuse  such  a  philosophy 
of  quietism  who  notices  how  few  are  willing  to  fight  unless  they 
are  assured  beforehand  that  victory  is  in  some  way  certain. 
Neo-realism,  however,  does  not  share  this  strong  faith,  so  im- 
pervious to  the  vicissitudes  of  human  experience.  It  is  not  that 
neo-realism  is  hostile  to  the  proper  interpretation  of  religious 
experience.  As  I  have  tried  to  indicate  elsewhere,  its  logic, 
with  its  emphasis  on  the  organizing  relations,  is  a  better  instru- 
ment for  social  philosophy  than  any  nominalistic  philosophy 
which  must  contain  latent  atomism  or  individualism.  But 
neo-realism  sees  no  evidence  that  any  human  community  like 
church  or  state  necessarily  embodies  our  highest  goal.  The 
neo-realist  lives  in  a  world  in  which  there  are  all  sorts  of  possi- 
bilities of  which  only  a  small  number  succeed  in  becoming  actual, 
and  where  all  our  gods  or  goods  may  meet  with  defeat. 

College  of  the  City  of  New  York.  MorrIS  R.  CohEN. 


NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION. 

THE  directional  value  of  negation  seems  to  me  a  not  unprof- 
itable subject  for  discussion  at  this  time.  This  is  perhaps 
only  to  say  that  I  think  I  have  something  worth  submitting  on 
the  subject,  but  in  any  case  practically  and  logically  negation  is 
a  very  common  attitude  or  motive  in  experience,  at  the  present 
time  being  very  much  in  evidence,  and  its  value,  in  particular 
its  relation  to  direction,  is  a  subject  of  real  interest.  Also, 
whatever  may  be  said  for  the  substance  or  the  manner  of  the 
discussion  that  follows,  the  subject  is  certainly  one  that  may  be 
chosen  for  the  present  occasion,  when  special  honor  to  Professor 
Royce  is  intended.  Any  subject,  however,  seriously  undertaken, 
would  have  Royce 's  approval. 

Anarchy,  agnosticism,  irrationalism  and  many  other  cults  or 
attitudes  in  negation — not  all  of  them,  socialism,  for  example,  or 
liberalism  or  naturalism,  bearing  names  of  negative  form — are 
surely  among  the  signs  of  the  time,  and  accordingly  give  more 
than  a  mere  formal  or  abstractly  logical  interest  to  the  problem 
of  direction.  Now,  moreover,  as  at  any  time,  there  are  many 
who  from  thoughtlessness  or  superficiality  wonder  how  there 
can  be  any  real  direction  in  negation,  their  opinion  being  that 
negations  can  lead  nowhere  or  at  least  nowhere  in  particular  or 
nowhere  pertinently.  Not  only  have  popular  notions  taken  this 
discouraging  view,  but  also  even  expert  theories  have  often 
failed  to  recognize  clearly  and  appreciate  fully  the  part  that 
negation  has  or  may  have  in  direction.  So  I  would  discuss  the 
question;  and  my  thesis  is  just  this:  Logically  and  practically 
negation  can  never  be  merely  and  absolutely  negative,  as  so 
often  assumed ;  on  the  contrary,  in  general  it  does  and  must  lead 
somewhere  and,  what  is  more,  in  a  pertinent  and  orderly  way. 
Indeed  there  can  be  no  real  negation  without  direction,  and 
even  this:  direction  can  be  significant  in  the  life  of  anything 
positive  only  through  negation. 

In  support  and  explanation  of  this  thesis  I  begin  with  certain 
383 


384  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

very  simple  and  familiar  principles.  Thus,  for  the  first  of  these, 
whenever  there  is  definite  assertion  or  'position,'  then  is  also, 
in  tendency  if  not  in  fulfilment,  generalization,  and  the  outcome 
of  generalization  is  always  negation,  transcendence  of  the  positive. 
The  idea  here  is  manifestly  HegeUan,  but  apart  from  its  Hegelian- 
ism  in  real  life  propagandism,  imperialism,  all  forms  of  what  in 
general  I  may  call  monarchism  or  monism  or  even  monomania, 
reputable  or  abnormal,  show  both  how  inseparable  position  and 
generalization  are  and  how  negation  or  opposition  results  in- 
evitably from  their  union.  With  such  origin,  however,  negation 
cannot  escape  a  certain  inheritance  from  its  parents,  position 
and  generalization. 

Secondly,  then,  among  the  familiar  principles  referred  to, 
nothing  positive  may  be  negated  or  say  transcended  by  reason 
of  its  generalization,  without  assertion,  open  or  implied,  of  the 
principle,  the  general  principle,  of  that  for  which  in  particular 
form  the  positive  thing  negated  has  been  standing.  Thus  you 
can  not  honestly  proclaim  some  one  an  impostor  without  ascribing 
actual  significance  to  that  which  he  has  claimed  to  represent. 
There  must  be  thrones,  if  there  be  pretenders;  truth  in  things, 
if  there  be  Hes  or  liars  about  them.  Again,  to  deny  the  letter  of 
some  creed  is  to  assert  the  spirit  and  even  anarchy  is  really  a 
call  for  a  new  regime.  A  metaphysical  nihilism,  declaring  there 
is  no  reality,  can  be  only  a  disguised  or  indirect  realism,  being 
nihilistic  only  relatively  to  some  passing  notion  of  reality.  So, 
to  recur  to  the  biological  figure  and  to  enlarge  upon  it  a  bit, 
although  the  negative  may  not  or  apparently  may  not  inherit 
the  formally  manifest  traits  or  characters  of  the  positive,  although 
really  or  apparently  it  may  not  inherit  any  of  these  quite  intact, 
at  least  it  must  inherit  the  general  principle,  the  basal  radical 
life  or  nature  of  the  positive;  showing,  if  never  the  exact  formal 
structure,  the  essential  function. 

Nor  can  negation,  thirdly,  he  said  to  inherit  only  the  general 
principle  of  the  positive  which  it  negates.  Can  any  negative 
ever  be  free  from  the  formal  context,  from  the  positive  conditions, 
of  its  origin?  Logically  a  negative,  even  if  seemingly  super- 
latively negative,  must  still  always  be  relative  or  relational. 


No.  3-]  NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION.  385 

However  negative,  whatever  else  be  true  of  it,  it  must  at  least 
formally  be  only  another  case  of  the  positive.  So,  for  example, 
are  morality  and  immorality,  although  very  distinct  from  each 
other,  both  cases  of  general  morality.  Opposition  is  possible 
only  between  things  alike.  Anarchy  attacking  organization  must 
nevertheless  adopt  organization.  Your  very  worst  enemy  can 
indeed  fight  with  you  only  as  he  adapts  himself  to  your  nature 
and  methods.  It  is  only  matter  that  may  not  penetrate  matter. 
Even  infinity  can  be  only  another  finite.  This  necessary  affinity 
of  context  or  at  least  formal  identity  of  negative  and  positive,  this 
relativity  of  the  negative,  is  a  thing  much  too  often  forgotten  or, 
if  remembered,  too  little  appreciated.  In  this,  as  in  its  many 
other  aspects,  the  negative  is  so  peculiarly  elusive.  So  easily 
one  has  regard  only  to  the  obtrusive  side  of  its  nature.  Yet  how 
deeply  and  subtly  the  child  enjoys  willing  not  to  touch,  taste, 
handle  or  otherwise  disturb  or  molest  the  forbidden  jam!  Just 
in  his  negative  attitude  and  his  filial  cultivation  of  it  lies,  hidden 
perhaps  but  very  much  alive,  a  sweetly  persisting  jam  context. 
Logically,  I  say,  and  with  not  less  truth  practically  the  context 
of  any  positive  must  persist  in  the  negative.  What  were  a 
negative  term,  impure  or  untied  or  apathetic,  with  only  the 
prefix? 

But,  fourthly,  and  not  so  simply,  now  that  the  negative,  born 
of  position  and  generalization,  has  been  shown  to  inherit  both 
the  general  principle  and  the  specific  context,  described  above 
also  as  the  manifest  traits  or  characters,  of  the  positive,  there  is 
some  danger  that  the  negative  itself  will  be  taken  for  a  mere 
shell,  an  empty  fiction,  quite  lacking  in  real  meaning  and  effect; 
in  other  words,  that,  inheriting  so  much,  it  will  seem  to  offer 
nothing  really  new;  and  this  danger  must  be  quickly  removed, 
although  the  sheer  absurdity  of  such  a  conclusion  might  be 
counted  on  to  take  care  of  it.  Thanks  to  nothing  less  than  that 
origin  in  the  meeting  of  position  and  generalization,  negation 
can  never  be  idle  or  empty.  It  does  inherit  the  general  prin- 
ciple or  function  of  the  positive,  but  it  retains  this  only  as  freed 
from  the  positive  parental  expression  for  some  new  expression. 
Again  it  does  inherit  the  context  or  particular  form  of   the 


386  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

positive,  but  this  it  does  not  and  cannot  retain  intact  or  un- 
changed in  value.  The  formal  context  of  the  positive  does 
indeed  persist  in  the  negative,  or  for  the  negative,  but  not  as 
something  final  and  intrinsic;  it  persists  only  as  something  having 
meaning,  as  something  real  or  valid  only  mediately,  not  any  longer 
immediately.  Negation,  as  our  story  has  it,  shows  the  positive 
neither  wholly  denied  nor — of  course  not  this — merely  reasserted, 
but  made  means  instead  of  end,  this  change  having  in  point  of 
fact  a  radical  character  not  easily  exaggerated.  The  end  to 
which  the  positive  becomes  only  means  lies  of  course  in  the  com- 
prehensive general  principle  or  function  which  the  negation  has 
freed  from  its  identification  with  the  positive.  So  is  there  truly 
a  great  difference  between  real  negation  and  'absolute'  negation 
so-called,  the  latter  being  as  idle  or  abstract  or  formal  as  'ab- 
solute.' Real  negation  is  relative,  and  its  rise  in  experience  must 
always  show  the  two  things  already  pointed  out:  (i)  the  liberated 
principle  as  end  or  meaning,  and  (2)  mediation — in  the  sense  of 
change  from  immediate  reality  or  value  to  only  mediate  reality 
or  value — of  the  positive  thing  negated.  'Absolute'  negation 
can  at  best  give  only  another  case,  perhaps  a  last  or  limiting 
case,  of  the  positive;  real  negation  quite  transcends  the  positive 
by  making  it  not  opposed,  but  mediate. 

It  seems  worth  while  to  add  here  that,  viewing  negation  from 
any  one  of  those  three  standpoints  which  were  so  closely  asso- 
ciated above,  from  the  contextual  affinity  of  negative  and  positive, 
or  from  the  necessity  of  opposition  being  in  kind  as  well  as  from 
the  negative's  relativity,  one  must  always  find  mediation  of  the 
positive  as  incident  to  the  negation.  As  to  either  the  affinity 
or  the  opposition,  what  two  mutually  opposed  things  have  in 
common  obviously  can  be  only  medium,  a  'medium  of  exchange' 
perhaps,  a  common  weapon  or  instrument,  the  always  necessary 
common  ground  on  which  distinct  differences  meet.  Just  by 
dint  of  the  difference,  the  opposition,  the  negation,  it  simply  can 
not  be  immediate  any  longer.  But  the  relativity  of  the  negative 
is  of  most  direct  interest  here.  So,  to  return  to  that,  not  only 
are  all  real  negatives  relative,  but  also  in  all  relativism  there  is 
negation,  perhaps  often  disguised,  however  poorly,  never  really 


No.  3-]  NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION.  387 

hidden;  and  relativism,  as  is  a  commonplace  at  least  in  history 
if  not  formally  in  logic,  has  never  been  without  its  notable  associ- 
ate, utilitarianism.  The  relative,  besides  being  the  questioned 
if  not  denied,  the  mistrusted  if  not  opposed,  has  been  also  the 
merely  useful  or  mediate  and  so,  I  add,  the  forerunner  of  some 
real  change. 

But,  fifthly,  now  to  reach  an  important  conclusion  from  what 
has  so  far  been  presented,  negation,  having  such  origin  and  such 
inheritance,  brings  difference  or  change  of  a  sort  which  I  think 
can  best  be  described  as  dimensional.  Real  negation  means,  it 
implies  and  induces  dimensional  difference;  this  being,  as  I 
conceive  it,  neither  difference  in  mere  degree  nor  absolute  dif- 
ference in  kind,  but  a  true  tertium  quid.^  The  term  dimensional 
or  dimension  is  of  course  borrowed  from  mathematics,  and  bor- 
rowed by  a  layman  in  mathematics  at  that,  but  some  intimation 
of  its  meaning  even  as  used  here  should  be  evident  from  its  source, 
although  many  may  regard  the  term  in  this  place  as  quite  too 
metaphorical  to  be  profitable.  Also,  as  must  be  conceded, 
philosophy  has  need  in  general  of  guarding  herself  against  too 
much  mathematicalism,  professional  or  lay.  The  meaning  here, 
however,  is  the  chief  thing,  be  the  term  wisely  borrowed  or  not, 
and  in  the  present  intention  a  dimensional  difference  or  change  is 
one  which,  although  qualitative,  although  really  negative  of 
something,  although  in  kind,  is  still  both  congruous  with  and 
dependent  upon,  not  directly  but  mediately  dependent  upon, 
that  from  which  the  different  thing  is  said  to  be  different.  Other- 
wise put,  anything  become  only  mediate  is  dimensionally  in- 
ferior to  that  to  which  it  is  mediate,  the  latter  being  dimensionally 
greater.  This  may,  then,  be  a  bold  use  of  the  term  dimension, 
suggesting  as  plainly  it  does  that  dimensional  difference  is  inti- 
mately related  to  the  distinction  between  means  and  end,  but 
I  think  I  can  at  least  make  out  a  plausible  case. 

The  whole  question  of  dimensions  is  of  course  not  just  one  of 
length,  breadth  and  thickness,  nor  of  the  rectangular  relation 

*  I  have  discussed  dimensional  difference  in  two  other  articles:  "The  Logic  of 
Antithesis,"  in  The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods, 
Vol.  VIII,  No.  11;  and  "Dualism,  Parallelism  and  Infinitism,"  in  Mind,  Vol.  XX, 

N.  S.,  No.  78. 


388  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

that  these  may  have  to  each  other.  Like  other  things,  dimen- 
sions are  always  of  wider  and  deeper  principle  than  any  given 
case  of  them  can  ever  adequately  exemplify.  Simply  any  given 
case  must  be  relative  to  some  particular  situation.  I  submit, 
then,  as  already  suggested,  that  in  general  in  dimensional  dif- 
ference or  change  there  is  involved  the  distinction  between  means 
and  end,  that  where  you  have  the  distinction  you  have  dimen- 
sional difference  and  where  you  have  dimensional  difference  you 
have  the  distinction.  As  to  the  objection,  which  is  quite  likely 
to  be  raised,  that  dimensions  coexist,  whereas  in  the  distinction 
between  means  and  end  there  is  always  an  implication  of  move- 
ment or  action,  the  former  thus  being  spacial  and  the  latter 
temporal,  I  would  simply  say  that  dimensional  variation  may 
very  properly  be  viewed  genetically  and  that  in  any  given  instance 
coexisting  dimensions,  like  those  of  ordinary  three-dimensioned 
space,  may  only  (i)  represent  certain  accomplished  adjustments 
or  mediations  and  yet  also  (2)  just  by  their  structurally  deter- 
mined region  be  mediative  of  some  activity  in  time  that  realizes 
a  new  dimensional  variation  of  the  mediating  region.  Ordinary 
space's  three  dimensions  only  bound  or  define  a  region  that  form- 
ally or  structurally  is  what  it  is  relatively  to  such  established 
adaptations  of  varying  but  functionally  related  factors  as  accord 
with  the  possibility  of  locomotion  or  change  of  place,  or  even  with 
the  possibility  only  of  a  certain  type  of  locomotion  or  change  of 
place.  Locomotion,  in  other  words,  is  so  much  a  matter,  if 
physical  or  objective,  of  mere  mechanical  routine  or,  if  subjective, 
of  free  habit  or  second  nature,  that  its  sphere  or  region,  its  space, 
appears  quite  staid,  seeming  static  in  character  and  coexistent 
and  eternal  in  all  its  parts  component  or  dimensional.  But  this 
staid  character,  or  rigidity,  is  relative  to  the  freedom  of  the 
locomotion  or  to  the  perfect  adjustments  which  the  freedom 
shows.  The  space  of  the  locomotion,  itself  three-dimensioned, 
may  still  be  only  mediate  to  something  different,  dimensionally 
different. 

In  most  general  terms,  if  one  view  any  dimensional  variation 
genetically  and  so  in  accordance  with  the  distinction  between 
means  and  end,  the  new  dimension,  say  the  w  -f-  ist  dimension. 


No.  3-1  NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION.  389 

instead  of  being  just  one  more  statically  and  numerically,  as  if 
its  ordinate  place  and  character  had  no  distinct  value,  as  if  with 
the  advance  there  was  no  enhancement  and  progression  of  mean- 
ing, even  no  advance  in  quality,  must  always  be  a  mark  of  some- 
thing to  which  the  lower  dimensional  field,  that  is,  the  w-field,  has 
become  only  means  or  medium.  Indeed  is  not  the  mediation,  here 
suggested,  to  be  detected  in  the  familiar  functional  relation  that 
maintains  between  dimensions,  even  when  viewed  quite  statically 
or  coexistentially?  Any  two,  if  functions  of  each  other,  are  in 
the  relation  of  means  to  end,  so  to  speak,  reciprocally;  the  dy- 
namic character  of  the  relation  being  only  hidden  in  the  poise, 
the  established  balance,  of  the  function  and  being  indeed  only 
truly  dynamic  because  of  the  reciprocity.  A  function  so  accur- 
ately established  as  to  be  reciprocal  or  reversible,  like  the  func- 
tions of  coexisting  variants  or  dimensions,  is  the  very  basis  of  a 
freely  active  force.  Furthermore,  if  an  established  function 
thus  shows  reciprocity  in  the  relation  between  means  and  end  and 
so  also  gives  evidence  of  a  freely  active  force,  one  needs  only  to 
look  in  order  to  see  that  the  situation  thus  comprising  at  once  a 
rigid  system,  the  established  region  of  the  function,  and  a  liber- 
ated force,  the  movement  within  the  system,  must  be  potential 
with  something  else,  with  something  different,  to  which  the 
situation  itself  is  become  only  mediate.  Ordinary  space,  the 
rigid  sphere  of  free  locomotion,  may  be  mediative  of  activities 
dimensionally  much  more  complex. 

To  ordinary  space  and  locomotion  I  shall  have  occasion  to 
refer  hereafter.  Here,  besides  pointing  out  that  any  dimensional 
difference  or  variation  may  be  viewed  genetically  and  under  the 
relation  of  means  and  end,  a  variation  in  dimensions,  n,  n  -\-  1, 
n  -\-  2,  etc.,  showing  a  progressive  mediation,  I  would  suggest 
also — perhaps  now  quite  unnecessarily — that  any  dimensional 
variation  must  involve  more  than  a  quantitative  change.  In 
other  words,  a  manifoldly  dimensional  field  or  region  can  be,  or 
contain,  no  mere  homogeneous  mass,  but  must  involve  hetero- 
geneity, its  dimensions  making  only  a  systematic  distribution  of 
qualitatively  different  factors.  Thus,  very  simply  put,  a  four- 
dimensioned  field  varied  by  a  fifth  dimension  involves  a  difference 


390  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

that  is  not  like  in  kind  to  the  ordinary  quantitative  difference 
between  four  and  five.  In  the  former  case  there  is  a  structural 
change;  in  the  latter,  only  a  change  quite  within  given  structural 
conditions.  In  ordinary  mathematical  terms,  which  can  not 
wholly  conceal  the  facts,  the  former  involves  ratios  and  multi- 
plication, for  a  new  dimension  is  always  a  multiplier,  a  constant 
factor;  but  the  latter  involves  mere  quanta  or  masses  and  addi- 
tion. Logically  the  context  of  multiplication  is  very  different, 
qualitatively  different,  from  that  of  addition;  as  different  as 
ratio  from  mass.  Multiplication  may  be,  as  we  used  to  be 
taught,  merely  a  short  method  of  addition,  but  this  does  not 
preclude  its  being  a  different  kind  of  thing.  A  dimensional 
difference,  then,  is  not  a  quantitative  difference;  or,  if  a  quanti- 
tative difference,  is  its  own  kind  of  quantitative  difference,  unlike 
that  of  mere  aggregation. 

At  risk  of  offending  with  much  repetition,  in  any  dimensional 
change,  n  being  what  you  please  and  the  w-)-ist  dimension  being 
a  multiplier  of  the  w-dimensioned  field  or  structure,  the  change 
reduces  the  w-field  from  an  aggregate  of  mass-values  to  a  system 
of  ratio-values;  and  ratios,  as  was  said,  certainly  do  give  a  differ- 
ent context  from  that  supplied  by  mere  masses.  Also,  as  showing 
another  phase  of  the  change,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  «  +  ist 
dimension  there  is  realized  a  peculiar  superiority  to  the  merely 
quantitative  conditions  or  limitations  of  the  w-field.  Fifteen, 
for  example,  as  a  whole,  is  a  distinct  sort  of  a  whole,  a  whole  of  a 
higher  kind,  when  the  multiplicand  of  some  number,  its  multi- 
plier, as  compared  with  fifteen  as  a  whole  simply  increased  by 
some  addition.  As  a  multiplicand  it  is  a  functional  whole,  a 
mediated  whole,  an  integral  system  of  ratios  or  related  parts 
become  the  medium  of  something  formally  different,  and  in  this 
character  of  system  there  is  that  peculiar  superiority.  In  the 
difference  between  length  and  area  or  between  area  and  solidity 
there  is  to  be  seen  the  change  of  context  and  quality  above 
referred  to,  for  the  lower  region  as  well  as  the  mediation  of  that 
region,  length  being  only  mediate  to  area,  area  to  solidity.  But 
of  course  the  idea  is  not  confined  to  such  commonplace  geometry. 
In  any  dimensional  difference  the  lower  field,  becoming  mediate, 


No.  3.]  NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION.  39I 

changes  from  one  kind  of  whole  to  another  kind  of  whole,  from 
an  aggregate  whole  to  a  relational  whole.  Dimensional  variation, 
to  sum  up,  and  mediation  and  heterogeneity  go  together;  and, 
lest  we  forget,  in  each  of  these  there  is  evident  a  negation  of  some- 
thing or,  say,  evidence  of  what  it  is  to  negate  something.  Any 
given  region,  negated,  mediates  something  different. 

Furthermore,  still  to  consider  the  nature  of  dimensions  and  to 
court  still  the  favor  or  at  least  the  patience  of  mathematics, 
there  is  an  incident  of  dimensional  variation,  of  any  change  from 
n  to  w  +  i  dimensions,  that  should  have  close  attention;  since, 
as  seems  to  me,  it  throws  important  light  on  the  meaning  of 
negation  and  of  the  various  accompaniments  of  negation  which 
have  been  pointed  out  here.  Thus,  to  begin  with,  the  w+ist 
dimension  must  always  stand,  of  course  for  something  formally 
different  from  the  mediating  lower  field,  the  «-field,  but  also  for 
something  essentially  possible  to,  or  potential  in,  that  field. 
Such  essential  in  distinction  from  formal — or  mechanical? — po- 
tentiality might  be  concluded  from  the  functional  relation  that 
the  new  dimension  must  have  to  the  mediating  field;  and  the 
conclusion  itself  suggests  an  interesting,  if  bold,  question.  Can 
it  be  that  dimensional  variation  is  closely  akin  to  the  difference 
between  mechanism  and  organism,  the  mechanical  and  the  organ- 
ic? Certainly  the  organic,  always  depending  on  the  mediation 
of  some  mechanism,  must  be  something  essentially  potential  in 
the  mechanical  although  at  the  same  time  itself — notice  the 
negative — non-mechanical.  But,  such  bold  speculation  aside, 
so  much  being  said  of  the  potentiality  of  the  new  dimension  in 
the  mediating  field,  it  remains  to  be  added  that  much  of  the 
present  story,  at  least  a  very  important  chapter  of  it,  is  to  be 
found  in  the  infinity  of  an  infinite  series  and  especially  in  the 
last  term  which  must  represent  a  possibility  of  the  series,  but 
being  infinite,  not  a  formal  possibility. 

Infinity,  however  negative,  is  always  the  infinity  of  something — 
a  simple  circumstance  not  infrequently  overlooked;  it  can  no 
more  be  free  from  the  context  of  some  finite  than  any  negative 
can  be  free  from  the  context  of  its  positive.  But,  furthermore, 
nothing  infinite  can  ever  be  duly  accounted  for  as  merely  the 


392  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

largest  or  the  smallest  possible,  for  the  infinity  of  a  thing  must  be 
more  than  just  the  supreme  variation  in  number  or  size,  and  not 
to  see  it  as  more  is  to  fail  to  give  the  negative  in  it  full  significance. 
Also  it  is  to  belie  the  last  term  by  treating  it  as  a  formal  possi- 
bility. Thus  a  so-called  infinite  term,  a  last  term  or  limit,  of  a 
series  can  not  possibly  be  a  term  of  the  series  and  also  last  or 
infinite;  a  difficulty  that  is  quite  too  old  and  familiar  to  need 
more  than  mention.  Simply  by  its  negative  the  infinity  adds 
something  besides  maximum  or  minimum  size  to  the  finite.  Any 
series  of  terms  must  obviously  be  more  than  just  the  terms  of  the 
series  and  at  least  a  part,  an  important  part,  of  the  meaning  of 
the  infinite  term  must  somehow  be  that  by  which  the  series  is 
more,  the  very  infinity  even  effecting  a  certain  abstraction  of  the 
positive  finite  terms  of  the  series  and  revealing  and  asserting, 
apart  from  these  terms  and  their  formal  character,  something 
essential  to  the  series,  general  to  all  the  terms,  and  formally  dif- 
ferent. The  'last  term,'  for  example,  of  the  simple  series: 
I.  ^.  4.  8  •  •  •  is  describable  in  various  ways,  every  one  of  them 
having  some  regard  to  this  peculiarity.  It  is  hardly  the  half  of 
anything,  since  at  infinity  there  would  be  nothing  left  to  halve, 
but  halving  itself  as  a  principle,  a  function,  at  last  free  from  any 
particular  application  and  so  implying  all  possible  applications. 
It  is,  then,  as  implying  all  possible  applications,  not  so  much  a 
term  of  the  series  as  the  series's  unity  or  law  that  has  been  exem- 
plified in  every  term.  If  you  would  call  it  zero,  you  must  remem- 
ber that  it  is  a  contextual  zero.  Is  there  any  other  kind  of  zero? 
Moreover,  in  so  far  as  it  is  zero,  not  only  is  abstraction  made  of 
all  the  positive  formal  terms,  but  also  the  abstraction  is  no  sooner 
accomplished  than  these  very  positive  terms  return  to  the  series 
in  a  new  character,  all  of  them  having  the  nature  of  the  infinite 
term.  In  short,  they  return  to  the  series  as  constituting  a 
system  rather  than  a  series,  as  'relations'  rather  than  'things,' 
ratios  rather  than  quanta.  So  does  the  infinite  term  show  itself 
like  any  other  negative,  to  be  born  of  position  and  generalization, 
to  have  inherited  the  principle  or  function  of  the  positive,  and 
to  have  rendered  the  positive  only  a  mediating  system.  With 
regard  to  the  mediation  it  remains  to  be  said  that  by  the  change 


No.  3-]  NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION.  393 

from  series  to  system,  which  logically  the  infinite  term  completes, 
the  formal  series  is,  so  to  speak,  taken  up — aufgehoben? — into  a 
region  dimensionally  enhanced,  mediation  and  dimensional 
variation  being  inseparable.  Thus,  again,  the  logical  value  of 
the  last  or  infinite  term  includes  a  dimensional  change  for  the 
field  within  which  the  finite  terms  have  their  manifest  form ;  and 
the  term  itself,  so  valued,  appears  indeed  as  a  true  tertium  quid 
between  difference  in  degree — the  term  as  essentially  although 
not  formally  a  term  of  the  series — and  difference  in  kind — the 
term  as  standing  for  something  in  and  of  the  series  but  formally 
different.  Possibly  the  same  story  is  told  at  least  as  plainly  in 
the  following  way:  An  infinite  series,  whatever  its  positive 
manifest  form,  must  always  be  expressive  of  a  functional — so 
different  from  a  structural — unity;  of  such  a  unity  between  two 
formally  different  things,  making  some  w-field  mediate  to  the 
«+ist  dimension  or  taking  an  w  field  up  into  an  w  +  i-field. 

Parenthetically  I  venture  to  remark  that  the  real  logic  of 
mathematics  is  commonly  hidden  in  the  very  abstraction,  the 
extremely  formal  character,  of  mathematics.  In  a  world  of 
purely  formal  relationships,  the  real  things  related  are  made  as 
invisible  as  ghosts.  Graphical  representations,  therefore,  are 
bound  to  be  of  great  value,  since  in  some  measure  they  bring  to 
view  important  logical  implications  that  otherwise  would  be 
quite  hidden.  It  has  often  puzzled  me,  for  example,  that  one 
could  ever  get  the  sum  of  an  infinite  series;  for,  however  formally 
correct  the  calculated  sum  might  be,  there  has  still  seemed  to 
be  something  not  accounted  for;  but,  perhaps  only  in  my  lay- 
man's folly  or  my  superangelic  aggressiveness,  I  think  that  I  see 
a  simple  way  out  of  the  difficulty.  The  sum  of  the  series:  i,  \, 
\,\  .  .  .  is,  of  course,  2;  and, formally, one  need  go  nofarther;  but. 
to  go  farther,  if  the  series  be  formally  in  an  w-field,  the  2,  if  really 
'satisfying'  the  infinity  and  what  this  brings  to  the  series,  must 
be  in  an  w  +  i-field;  in  other  words,  2  as  a  product  rather  than  2 
as  a  sum;  graphically,  2  as  an  area  rather  than  a  length  or  as  a 
solid  rather  than  an  area,  depending  on  the  value  of  n.  To  the 
formal  mathematician  such  a  distinction  will  doubtless  seem  too 
subtle  or  altogether  empty  and  futile;  but,  whatever  be  its  value 


394  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

or  lack  of  value  in  the  mere  technique  of  mathematics,  it  strikes 
me  as  highly  important  in  the  real  logic  of  mathematics. 

I  do  not  know  if  I  have  succeeded  in  conveying  my  meaning. 
Yet  what  I  would  say  is  that  the  case  of  infinity  affords  a  specially 
interesting  illustration  of  the  negative  as  involving  dimensional 
difference  or  change.  If  any  given  finite,  or  structure,  be  of  n 
dimensions,  then  its  real  in  distinction  from  its  formal  or  only 
hypothetical  infinite  must  have  w  +  i  dimensions.  Infinite  space, 
for  example,  is  not  just  formally  like  but  bigger  than  the  biggest 
possible  finite  space;  for  (a)  a  finite  space  is  always  formally  a 
definite  and  specific  thing,  in  other  words  a  thing  of  n  dimensions, 
of  given  structure  and  originality,  {b)  it  is  made  infinite  only 
serially  or  gradually,  that  is  only  by  some  persisting  function, 
operation  or  principle,  the  series's  unity  or  law,  such  as  bisection, 
uniform  addition,  parallelism,  or  any  regular  variation  you 
please,  and  (c)  as  infinite,  far  from  being  the  series's  biggest,  or 
smallest,  possible  case  or  term,  it  reveals  something  true  of  all 
the  terms,  informal  or  superformal  to  them  and  virtually  trans- 
forming of  the  series  as  a  whole,  making  the  positive  series  only 
mediate  to  something  formally  different.  A  finite  space,  then, 
may  not  become  infinite  and  remain  formally  intact.  As  an 
«-space  it  must  remain  always  finite,  formally  unchanged; 
infinite,  it  is  an  w  +  i-space;  its  very  infinity  being  so  rounded  up 
or  brought  to  earth.  As  an  w  +  i-space,  although  infinite  rela- 
tively to  the  «-space  mediating  it,  although  positively  manifest- 
ing and  incarnating  the  infinity  of  that  space,  it  is  itself  quite 
earthy  for  being,  within  its  own  higher  region,  capable  of  inde- 
finite finite  expressions. 

Have  I  at  last  lost  myself  and  perhaps  others  in  the  maze  of 
mathematics?  I  make  no  apology.  Also  my  story,  although 
not  yet  finished,  is  approaching  its  last  chapter  and  there  may  be 
relief  in  that.  Before  leaving  the  field  of  mathematics,  however, 
or  rather  the  field  of  the  real  logic  of  mathematics,  there  is  a 
conclusion  from  much  that  has  now  been  said  which,  although 
possibly  somewhat  aside,  I  can  not  pass  without  mention. 
Thus,  in  just  a  word  or  two,  with  every  instance  of  mediation  or 
dimensional  variation  there  must  go  a  change  in  the  meaning  or 


No.  3-]  NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION.  395 

value  of  what  it  is  to  be  the  part  of  a  whole  or,  as  of  special  in- 
terest, of  what  it  is  to  have  position  or  location.  A  given  struc- 
ture or  region  having  n  dimensions  and  having  become  a  medi- 
ating system  to  an  «  +  ist  dimension,  every  part  or  position  in 
the  new  region  must  have  a  value  comprehensive  of  the  whole  of 
the  mediating  n-dimensioned  structure;  every  part  or  position 
must  be  intensive  with  the  complete  extension  of  the  lower  region 
and  so  must  be  said  to  have  the  freedom  of  that  region,  tran- 
scending the  limitations  of  partiality  or  particular  position  in  it. 
So  appears  in  a  new  way  that  peculiar  superiority  which  was 
claimed  above  for  the  new  region  in  any  case  of  mediation  over 
the  old,  any  part  or  position  in  the  new  being  as  if  all  parts 
or  as  if  everywhere  in  the  old;  and  this  fact  of  superiority, 
suggestive  even  of  the  infinite  for  which,  if  I  may  paraphrase 
the  words  of  the  Psalmist,  all  finite  places  are  as  one  place, 
opens  up  most  interesting  reflections  on  the  whole  problem  of 
location  or  participation.  In  any  valuation  of  part  or  place 
one  must  first  know,  let  me  say,  the  dimensional  coefficient.  To 
speak  in  the   familiar  symbols,  an  «+i-here  is  an  «-everywhere. 

Now,  to  recapitulate,  negation  has  been  seen  to  be  sprung  from 
position  and  generalization,  inheriting  from  its  allied  forebears 
at  once  the  freed  principle  of  the  thing  posited  and  the  thing 
posited  itself  as  a  mediated  whole.  Negation,  furthermore, 
having  such  inheritance,  brought  difference,  but  dimensional 
difference,  which  I  venture  to  speak  of  now  as  the  difference  of 
change  by  mediation.  Thus  there  is  mechanical  change,  vari- 
ation under  conditions  of  uniformity  and  commensurability,  in 
fact  routine  or  accumulation  rather  than  real  change.  There  is, 
again,  absolute  change,  the  creationalistic  change  of  an  old  time 
theology,  change  by  causation  ah  extra  or  production  ex  nihilo; 
difference,  then,  by  a  complete  dualism  or  pluralism;  not  real 
change.  And  there  is  change  or  difference  by  mediation;  the 
change  of  dimensional  difference,  discoverable,  as  has  now  been 
submitted,  even  in  the  dimensional  variations  of  space;  real 
change;  and,  as  may  be  added  here,  change  that  has  real  direction. 

So  much  have  we  seen.  But  for  appreciation  of  what  has  been 
found  there  is  need  of  other  than  mathematical  illustrations  of 


396  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

dimensional  difference,  useful  as  these  have  been;  for,  as  should 
be  remembered,  in  its  rise  here  the  idea  of  such  difference  was  as 
general  as  negation.  In  the  variation  of  an  «-field  by  an  w  +  ist, 
dimension  masses  were  seen  to  give  way  to  ratios,  component 
parts  to  relational  parts;  in  other  words  certain  assumed  ab- 
solutes became  relative;  and  relativism  succeeding  absolutism  is 
certainly  no  mere  mathematical  phenomenon,  being  quite  as 
typical  of  the  worlds  of  psychology  and  sociology.  In  these 
worlds,  too,  the  relative,  as  was  indeed  remarked,  is  also  the 
mediate,  the  useful,  quite  as  truly  as  in  the  world  of  mathematics. 
To  explain  a  little,  relativism  in  general,  when  supplanting  ab- 
solutism, always  means  the  passing  of  certain  positive  standards, 
or  'measures.'  Once  treated  as  final  and  absolute,  these  are 
become  only  'relative'  and  with  the  change  the  pertaining  whole, 
perhaps  the  organized  life  of  some  people,  in  which  they  have 
maintained,  becomes  in  the  course  of  history  a  mediated  whole, 
losing  at  once  its  isolation  and  a  certain  inner  discreteness  or 
separation  of  its  parts  that  has  made  it  more  social  aggregate 
than  a  unity.  In  short  the  relativism  shows  a  social  system 
come  or  coming  into  free,  open  use;  its  various  component  in- 
stitutes changing  from  things  of  direct  interest,  each  with  its  own 
cherished  and  intrinsic  value,  to  so  many  related  conventions  or 
utilities;  from  distinct  institutes,  each  quick  with  its  own  human 
life  and  passion,  to  mere  instruments  generally  and  freely  in  use 
because  become  conventional  and  humanly  dead ;  for  relativism 
and  utilitarianism,  I  say  again,  are  of  the  same  day  and  genera- 
tion. It  may  be  only  a  coincidence,  but  it  seems  a  coincidence  well 
worth  some  reflection,  that  among  the  ancient  Greeks  mathe- 
matics came  to  a  consciousness  of  the  difference  between  mass 
and  ratio,  leading  eventually  to  Euclid's  mingling  that  strange 
and  incongruous  book  of  proportions  with  the  other  books  of 
his  geometry,  at  about  the  same  time  that  brought  the  relativistic 
and  utilitarian  dictum  of  Protagoras:  Man  is  the  measure  of  all 
things.  The  mass-unit  and  the  definite  or  positive  standard  or 
measure  of  any  kind  were  thus  dethroned  contemporaneously;  all 
such  measures  being  henceforth  only  'relative';  there  being  no 
longer  any  supposed  commensurability  of  men  or  things.     But, 


No.  3.]  NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION.  397 

Euclid's  book  of  proportions  aside,  in  what  I  have  said  above  of 
relativism  and  of  a  social  system  coming  into  use,  becoming  me- 
diated, I  shall  seem  to  some  to  be  blinding  myself  to  an  important 
fact.  Relativism,  they  will  insist,  by  discrediting  traditional 
positive  standards  and  institutions  really  brings  individualism 
and  serious  social  disorganization  instead  of  'social  system  in 
free  use.'  This  fact  or  rather  this  notion  I  deny.  Such  a  way 
of  putting  the  case  rests  on  a  misunderstanding  of  individualism, 
of  the  disorganization  so  often  seen  and  of  a  social  system  become 
a  mediated  whole  or  come  into  real  use.  Thus  the  assertive 
individual,  always  more  the  cosmopolitan  than  the  provincial 
patriot,  has  at  last  found  the  various  elements  of  the  organized 
life  around  him  only  so  many  adjustable  parts  of  a  useful  whole, 
which  just  in  being  used  becomes  a  real  unity  or  system,  and  there 
results,  relatively  to  the  traditional  sanctity  and  conservative 
integrity  of  things,  seeming  instability  and  disorganization.  Yet 
the  'disorganization'  is  only  an  incident  of  the  use  or  mediation, 
very  much  as  a  law's  loss  of  rigor  is  an  incident  of  its  application 
in  real  practice.  There  must  ever  be  'disorganization,'  when 
mere  use  or  only  mediate  interest  succeeds  immediate  devotion, 
when  the  sacred  turns  secular.  Deeply,  however,  nothing  is  so 
organizing  as  secularization.  Moreover,  the  individual  is  at 
once  a  truer  and  bigger  whole,  a  more  comprehensive  and  a  more 
complex  unity,  than  the  local  system  or  order  which,  thanks  to 
the  possible  adjustments  of  parts,  he  has  been  able  to  make  only 
the  means  to  his  now  cosmopolitan  life.  I  might  add,  too,  that 
the  individual  is  always  something  of  a  foreigner  and,  thanks  to 
his  cosm.opolitanism,  is  never  without  his  invitation  to  what  is 
foreign.  But  the  foreign,  by  the  very  negation  in  it,  is  only  an 
influence  sure  to  bring  to  completion  the  relativism  and  utili- 
tarianism in  the  life  of  a  people.  Invading  foreigners,  although 
like  bulls  in  a  china-shop,  are  so  much  freer  even  than  the  cos- 
mopoUtans  at  home  really  to  use  what  they  find,  unhampered  as 
they  are  by  any  lingering  emotional  associations.  Just  here,  then, 
that  is,  in  the  negation  which  the  new  or  foreign  realizes,  lies 
what  must  give  special  significance  to  the  analogy,  here  suggested, 
between    sociological    and    mathematical    relativism    and    the 


398  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

several  incidents,  mediation  and  dimensional  difference,  which 
relativism  implies.  Thus  with  the  negation  from  the  foreign 
there  must  come  into  life  real  difference,  but  a  difference — how- 
ever bold  or  seemingly  crude  it  may  be  to  describe  it  so — that  is 
no  more  or  no  less  radical  than  a  dimensional  variation.  It  is  a 
dimensional  variation  under  the  here  adopted  definition ;  for  the 
new  life  that  is  brought  about  is  always  dependent  upon  the 
mediation  of  the  old  regime.  Such  mediation,  moreover,  is  more 
radical  than  revolution,  which  commonly  brings  only  opposition 
and  succession  in  kind ;  it  is  as  radical  as  evolution ;  as  the  change 
from  the  ancient  civilizations  to  the  Christian  or  from  the  medi- 
eval regime  to  the  modern.  In  history,  as  in  logic,  change  by 
mediation  is  the  only  real  change. 

Further  illustration  of  what  is  meant  here  by  mediation  and 
dimensional  difference,  by  change  through  mediation,  as  coming 
from  negation,  is  afforded  by  the  various  circumstances  that 
always  underlie  a  movement  for  democracy.  This  case  of 
democracy,  I  may  say,  was  the  subject  of  a  paper  published 
recently^  under  the  title:  "The  Duplicity  of  Democracy,  or 
Democratic  Equality  and  the  Principle  of  Relativity."  In  any 
democratic  call  for  equality,  a  call  that,  however  seemingly 
abstract  and  general  in  its  terms,  is  always  in  effect  relative  to 
some  particular  social  and  political  context,  that  is,  to  some  es- 
tablished type  of  social  organization,  there  is  to  be  seen,  in  the 
first  place,  something  positive,  so  far  as  also  general,  becoming 
only  mediate.  In  both  the  generalization  and  the  mediation, 
moreover,  one  can  see  negation,  the  democratic  attack  upon 
the  positive,  that  is,  conflict  of  democracy  with  some  aristocracy 
and  its  peculiar  privilege;  and  the  result  of  all  is  that  special 
privilege  turns  into  general  opportunity,  the  institutes  of  the 
aristocracy  becoming  the  general  instruments  of  a  democracy. 
Democracy,  then,  at  least  under  present  definitions,  may  be 
spoken  of  as  a  dimensional  variation  of  aristocracy.  Also,  in 
like  manner,  constitutionalism,  for  which  the  given  law  is  only 
a  means  to  an  end,  is  a  dimensional  variation  of  political  abso- 
lutism ;  induction,  of  deduction ;  rationalism  and  mathematicalism, 

^American  Journal  of  Sociology,  September,  1915. 


No.  3-1  NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION.  399 

of  a  positive  and  dogmatic  legalism;  industrialism,  of  militarism; 
and,  not  to  make  a  longer  list.  Protestantism  or  liberalism 
generally  in  religion,  of  a  religion  of  authority.  In  all  of  these 
'dimensional  variations,'  as  in  the  case  of  democracy,  something 
positive  has  been  at  once  generalized  and  negated  and  so  has 
been  made  mediate  to  something  new,  to  something  radically 
different. 

"Is  he  diagramming  history,"  I  imagine  some  one  asking  at 
this  point,  "for  the  entertainment  of  mankind?  Would  he 
draw  the  life  of  one  period  of  history  in  n  dimensions  and  of  the 
suceeding  period  in  w+i?  How  humorously  profound!  So  to 
illustrate  his  story  is  truly  delightful,  although  possibly  more 
delightful  than  true."  Let  a  dimensional  history  amuse,  if  it 
must,  or  may.  Of  course  the  intended  meaning  is  the  important 
thing  and  the  meaning  is,  again,  that  the  significant  changes  of 
history  are  changes  by  mediation,  the  later  thing,  the  new,  being 
what  it  is  only  by  the  free  mediation  of  the  old  or  passing  thing; 
only — with  apologies  for  the  worn  refrain — by  one  time  institutes 
becoming  the  instruments  of  human  life.  Can  the  new,  if  new, 
if  different,  if  negative  of  the  old,  ever  escape  the  context  and 
mediation  of  the  old? 

But,  waiving  further  illustration,  whether  from  mathematics 
or  from  history,  and  resuming  the  recounting  of  general  prin- 
ciples and  their  story,  I  turn  at  last,  sixthly,  to  the  simple  con- 
clusion, virtually  stated  already,  that  in  dimensional  difference, 
consequent  upon  negation,  in  change  by  mediation,  lies  the 
direction  which  I  would  claim  as  not  less  practically  than  logic- 
ally belonging  to  negation,  even  to  such  negatives  as  were  men- 
tioned at  the  beginning  of  this  paper,  anarchism,  atheism,  ag- 
nosticism, irrationalism,  and  many  others,  including  those  bearing 
names  not  negative  in  form.  In  such  change  by  mediation 
there  is  real  direction;  for,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  real  change, 
and,  in  the  second  place,  the  change  is  always,  so  to  speak,  mind- 
ful of  a  context.  A  dimensional  difference  might  even  be  defined 
as  a  difference  mindful  of  a  context;  and  certainly  significant 
direction  must  depend  on  such  mindfulness. 

Here,  then,  this  paper  might  come  to  an  end,  for  in  essential 


400  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

principles  its  course  is  run,  its  story  told.  It  is,  however,  a 
poor  story  that  awakens  no  afterthought;  and  so,  to  save  my  tale 
at  least  from  the  appearance  of  poverty,  a  few  reflections,  some 
with  a  view  to  meeting  possible  criticisms,  some  perhaps  of  a 
lived-happily-ever-after  character,  are  appended. 

In  human  experience  as  worked  out  socially,  as  developed  in 
a  social  organization,  where  social  classes  exist  under  the  con- 
ditions of  division  of  labor,  specialism  and  all  sorts  of  isolated 
cults  and  interests,  one  may  often  have  difficulty  in  detecting 
the  conditions  and  results  of  negation  here  asserted.  Like  other 
attitudes  of  organized  and  more  or  less  isolated  groups,  negation 
may  often  seem  to  be  assumed  and  maintained  absolutely  and 
unqualifiedly,  that  is,  just  for  its  own  sake,  and  an  apparently 
aimless  and  directionless  violence  accordingly  may  quite  obscure 
every  thing  else.  But  in  the  logic  of  human  experience  one  needs 
to  remember  that  no  attitude  or  cult  of  a  group,  no  defined  class- 
interest,  positive  or  negative  in  character,  should  ever  be  taken 
by  itself.  No  such  interest  ever  represents  the  experience-whole. 
Clear  as  this  is,  it  is  often  overlooked.  From  the  standpoint  of 
wholeness,  then,  of  the  essential  unity  of  human  experience,  I 
think  that  the  social  expression  of  human  experience,  always 
more  disruptive  and  analytical  than  the  personal  or  individual, 
can  afford  no  real  case  against  the  idea  that  logically  or  practic- 
ally negation  leads  somewhere,  having  real  direction  by  the  di- 
mensional difference,  the  mediation  of  the  positive,  which  it 
brings. 

As  to  the  idea  being  practical  as  well  as  logical,  it  has  certainly 
had  its  place  in  psychology  and  biology  which  at  least  seem  to 
deal  more  directly  with  what  is  actual  than  logic.  In  these  fields 
the  fact  of  mediation  is  evident  in  the  part  taken  in  all  theories 
of  adaptation  by  the  distinction  between  the  structural  and  the 
functional,  the  formal  and  the  vital,  the  mechanical  and  the 
organic,  or  even,  recalling  Professor  Dewey's  valuable  contri- 
bution to  psychological  ethics,  impulse  and  will,  will  being  in 
his  phrase  the  'mediation  of  impulse,'  and  impulse  being  the 
response  of  given  structure  to  something  external  and  different. 
Biologically  or  psychologically,  as  well  as  sociologically,  the  logic 


No.  3-]  NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION.  4OI 

of  negation  and  mediation,  of  positive  structures  becoming 
mediate,  has  no  lack  of  illustrations.  Structures  become  medi- 
ate, as  they  confront  alien,  negative  conditions;  as  the  self,  iden- 
tified with  them,  adapts  itself  to  a  not-self  or  external  environ- 
ment. 

But  somebody  says  here  that  it  is  not  the  doctrine  of  mediation 
but  the  application  of  the  term  dimension  which  gives  him  pause. 
Logically  and  sociologically  and  psychologically  and  biologically 
there  seems  to  be  a  case  for  change  by  mediation,  but  to  make  the 
phrase,  'dimensional  difference,'  cover  all  such  changes  is  fan- 
tastic and  to  get  behind  a  definition  of  one's  own  is  quite  too 
arbitrary  to  be  accepted  without  some  protest.  So  must  I,  the 
offender,  return  once  more  to  the  scene  of  my  offense.  Replying 
to  the  critic  of  my  admittedly  very  comprehensive  dimensionalism 
I  shall  get  out  from  behind  my  definition  and  suggest:  (a)  that 
dimensional  difference,  like  most  if  not  all  other  things,  is  bound 
to  be,  as  has  in  fact  been  said  here  already,  more  in  principle 
than  in  its  usual  acceptance  or  application;  (6)  that  psycho- 
logically even  the  dimensional  values  of  ordinary  space  are 
acquired  by  processes  of  adaptation  and  mediation ;  (c)  that  ordi- 
nary space,  whether  regarded  psychologically  or  mathematically, 
is  ordinary  and  three-dimensional  only  by  virtue  of  an  abstrac- 
tion, which,  however  warranted,  needs  now  to  be  recognized  as 
arbitrary  and  so  misleading;  and  {d)  that  ordinary  and  three- 
dimensional  space  itself  is  or  may  be  in  reality,  that  is,  when 
seen  without  constraint  of  any  arbitrary  abstraction,  a  space  of 
many  more  than  three  dimensions  and  so  of  a  much  more  complex 
adaptation  or  a  much  larger  or  fuller  m.ediation  than  the  abstract 
standpoint  referred  to  can  possibly  disclose. 

(a)  The  first  suggestion  needs  no  explanation. 

(6)  The  second  will  hardly  be  disputed. 

(c)  The  third,  on  its  psychological  side,  obviously  has  reference 
to  the  fact  that  space  has  been  for  the  most  part  and  under  the 
prevailing  habit  of  mind  regarded  and  explained  only  as  a  region 
or  medium  of  bodily  locomotion.  This  fact  has  already  been  a 
matter  of  some  discussion  here,  but  it  may  be  enlarged  upon. 
Thus  the  old  theory  of  space  perception  by  association  of  visual 


402  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

sensations,  local  signs  and  muscular  sensations  was  certainly 
relative  to  the  notion  of  the  self  or  subject,  whether  in  its  whole 
body  or  in  distinct  parts,  like  the  moving  legs,  the  gesturing  arms, 
or  the  adapting  eyes,  as  locomotive;  and,  so  far  as  I  can  appreci- 
ate, later  theories  or  later  variations  of  this  theory  have  not 
really  freed  themselves  from  such  an  isolation  of  the  locomotive 
self.  Relatively  to  the  locomotive  self  space  may  be  so  and  so; 
perhaps,  thanks  to  the  bilateral  structure,  the  erect  position  and 
the  free  mobility,  three-dimensional,  possessing  height  and  width 
and  perspective  or  depth;  but  one  must  always  remember  the 
relativity  and  the  abstract  standpoint  determining  it.  In 
reality  locomotion  is  very  far  indeed  from  exhausting  the  nature 
or  meaning  of  the  self 's  spacial  activity,  even  of  its  activity  '  in 
space,'  and  the  space  itself  in  which  the  activity  takes  place  can 
not  therefore  be  merely,  so  to  speak,  a  room  to  move  about  in, 
while  one  does,  thanks  to  more  abstraction,  a  lot  of  non-spacial 
things.  The  self's  so-called  non-spacial  activities  are  quite  as 
truly  of  space  as  in  space.  The  higher  human  activities  in 
general  may  have  their  space  in  quo,  but  also,  in  a  sense  that  may 
not  yet  be  apparent,  they  must  have  their  space  oh  quern.  My 
Latin,  I  think,  is  correct. 

(d)  To  turn  to  the  fourth  suggestion,  which  is  only  comple- 
mentary to  the  third,  space,  even  ordinary  space,  really  must  be 
deep  with  the  values  of  activities  far  more  complex  in  their 
adaptive  or  mediative  character  than  those  of  mere  locomotion 
and  must  be  accordingly  differentiated  with  many  more  dimen- 
sions or  terms  of  functional  relation  than  the  three  which  loco- 
motion seems  to  require  or  which  express  the  natural  space  or 
extension  of  only  so  much  of  human  activity  or,  objectively,  of 
mere  change  of  place.  Admittedly  it  is  a  very  artificial  way  of 
showing  the  meaning  here  only  to  point  out  that,  dimensions 
being  multipliers  or  terms  of  functional  relation,  the  space  which 
to  the  conventional  locomotive  view  seems  only  three-dimensional 
may  really  be  reproduced  or  multiplied  into  itself  indefinitely, 
a  fourth  dimension — if  the  structural  basis  of  variation  be  rec- 
tangular— being  formally  but  not  actually  identical  with  the 
first,  a  fifth  with  the  second,  and  so  on;  but,  however  artificial 


No.  3-]  NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION,  403 

this  notion,  in  form  doubtless  more  mathematical  than  psycho- 
logical, it  is  well  to  recognize  and  appreciate  once  more  that  the 
ordinary  spacial  world  really  does  mediate  far  more  than  just 
the  locomotive  activities  and  so  that  the  actual  dimensions  of 
this  world's  space  can  not  possibly  stop  at  three — mathematically 
or  psychologically.  True,  the  psychology  of  the  fourth,  fifth, 
sixth  .  .  .  twentieth  dimension  has  yet  to  be  worked  out  and 
would,  if  ever  undertaken,  be  sure  to  meet  great  difficulties;  but, 
humorously  or  seriously,  psychology  has  not  been  in  the  habit  of 
stopping  at  difficulties.  I  wonder  if  it  may  not  be  said  that 
psychologically,  as  well  as  mathematically,  the  free  and  orderly 
motion  of  a  body  in  space  expresses  or  realizes — how  shall  I  put 
what  I  would  say? — a  field  or  space  which  is  dimensionally,  or 
functionally,  superior  to  that  merely  mediating  space  in  which 
the  motion  as  motion  seems  to  take  place.  Does  not  the  very 
freedom  and  order  of  such  motion  imply  a  functional  relation, 
a  dimension,  not  formally  manifest  in  the  spacial  structure  either 
of  the  body  itself  or  of  the  merely  containing  space?  The  mathe- 
matician may  duly  account  for  such  a  complication  by  his  device 
of  'powers,'  one  or  more  of  the  dimensions  being  squared  or 
cubed,  and  yet  fail  to  realize  that  the  motion  he  has  so  described 
expresses  more  than  the  space  it  seems  to  be  in,  expressing  a 
space  oh  quern  that  dimensionally  transcends  the  space  in  quo. 
But  the  mathematician's  blindness  should  not  set  the  limit  to  the 
evidence.  Wherever  there  is  orderly  activity  within  a  given 
structural  system,  there  is  realized  a  space  ob  quern  dimensionally 
superior  to  the  space  in  quo  of  the  activity.  Think,  furthermore, 
of  the  dimensional  variation  or  complexity  that  must  be  realized 
when  a  freely  moving  body  freely  uses — or  functions  with — a 
freely  moving  body;  as,  for  example,  when  a  human  being  makes 
use  of  a  tool  or  in  any  way  expresses  himself  or  his  'thought' 
through  any  mobile  medium.  The  situation  so  presented  is 
truly  a  complex  one,  probably  far  too  complex  for  successful 
analysis;  but  the  pertinent  fact  about  it  is  that  the  activity  is 
spacially  mediated  and  that  the  space  even  of  its  mediation  must 
lie  quite  within  the  ordinary  three-dimensional  space  of  mere 
locomotion. 


404  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

The  same  abstraction  which  has  hidden  from  view  the  deeper 
values  of  ordinary  space  has  also  hidden  the  meanings,  the  living 
and  immanent  meanings,  of  location  and  of  the  external  world, 
the  world  sensuously  perceived  in  space.  Of  location  or  position 
something  has  been  said  already.  To  know  the  value  of 
any  location  one  must  know  the  dimensional  coefficient.  As 
to  the  perceived  world,  to  all  human  activities  save  those  of 
locomotion,  this  has  been  indeed  an  external  world.  Primarily 
only  a  world  of  motor -signs,  landmarks,  tactile  values  and  such 
conditions  of  locomotion,  it  has  had  no  direct  and  intimate  part 
in  the  super-locomotive  activities.  Man's  nature,  in  short,  has 
been  divided.  He  has  been  a  creature  of  physical  or  sensuous 
activities  and  of  non-physical  or  non-sensuous  activities.  His 
consciousness  has  depended  on  the  distinct  faculties  of  ordinarily 
spacial  sense-perception  and  non-spacial  and  non-sensuous 
thought.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  in  recent  times  these  divisions 
have  been  losing  character,  or  animus,  but  the  illusion  of  them 
is  not  wholly  dispelled.  Yet,  even  as  the  space  in  which  men 
move  and  act  is  in  reality  indefinitely  dimensional,  being  un- 
limitedly  potential  with  what  may  be  called  mediative  power, 
being  a  space  whose  resources  are,  so  to  speak,  only  very  slightly 
exploited  by  locomotion,  the  perceived  world  in  space  can  be  no 
mere  world,  as  ordinarily  understood,  of  'external  perception.' 
It  is  itself  always  a  world  of  thought,  and  not  less  sensuous  or 
spacial  for  being  a  world  of  thought.  The  very  essence  of  thought 
is  mediation.  Thought  and  the  life  it  accompanies  and  directs, 
instead  of  being  non-spacial,  really  comprise  only  deeper  vari- 
ations, fuller  mediations,  of  that  same  space,  itself  a  realization  of 
thought,  the  ordinary  three-dimensional  space,  in  which  men 
move  and  perceive  sensuously  and  'externally.'  Perhaps,  if 
the  much  abused  impractical,  abstruse  thinker,  walking  the 
streets  of  life,  had  his  head  less  in  the  air,  realizing  that  his 
thinking  could  mean  only  added  dimensions  for  the  space  of  his 
walking,  in  other  words,  a  larger  and  deeper  mediation  of  the 
world  and  the  life  around  him,  his  thinking  would  be  less  abstruse 
and  impractical  and  he,  at  the  next  crossing,  less  in  danger  of 
being  run  over. 


No.  3.]  NEGATION  AND  DIRECTION.  405 

An  important  conclusion  from  the  foregoing  view  of  the 
external  world  is  plainly  this.  The  distinction  between  external 
and  internal  can  not  be  at  any  time  a  fixed  one,  single  in  applica- 
tion; it  must  be,  on  the  contrary,  not  indeed  an  unreal  distinction, 
but  moving  or  functional ;  always  an  incident,  specific  as  to  the 
application  and  content  of  the  terms,  of  every  mediation. 
Always  the  mediating  field  is  'external,'  but  its  meaning,  that 
which  it  mediates,  is  internal ;  yet  internal  in  a  relative  and  at  the 
same  time  somewhat  special  sense.  Thus  the  '  internal '  mean- 
ing is  so,  or  is  said  to  be  so,  for  being  different  in  kind  from  the 
form  or  structure  of  the  medium.  Meaning  must  always  be 
thus  different  in  kind  and  accordingly,  although  mediated  by 
the  given  structure,  can  not  be  formally  identified  with  this  but, 
relatively  to  it,  must  seem  hidden,  mysterious,  not  placeable 
anywhere,  'internal.'  So  internal,  however,  it  at  the  same  time 
comprehends  a  greater  sphere  than  that  in  which  it  has  no 
determined  place.  In  the  adopted  language  of  this  article,  while 
internal  or  without  position  relatively  to  the  space  in  quo,  the 
«-space,  it  has  its  place  and  part  in  the  space  ob  quern,  the  w  +  i- 
space,  any  one  of  whose  heres,  as  should  be  remembered,  is  an 
w-everywhere.  How  absurd  one's  language  does  sometimes 
get!  But  for  illustration  of  this  account  of  the  external  and  the 
internal  I  would  call  attention  to  certain  facts  of  history,  which 
is  only  human  experience  written  large.  In  history,  in  social 
evolution,  as  we  have  seen,  it  is  the  destiny  of  the  institutional 
to  become  instrumental,  of  the  immediate  to  turn  only  mediate, 
and,  further,  with  this  change  there  always  arises  a  vigorous 
assertive  individualism.  In  other  words  the  personal  members 
of  society  acquire  a  life  to  self,  a  life  by  reservation,  an  inner 
life,  to  which  the  institutional  order  of  the  time  becomes  only 
the  external  means  or  medium.  Such  an  inner  life,  however,  is 
so  only  relatively.  The  individual  feeling  and  asserting  it  is 
also  very  much  a  man  of  the  world,  the  outside  world,  another 
world,  in  feeling  and  volition  being  universal,  cosmopolitan, 
natural,  identifying  himself  even  with  things  quite  alien  to  the 
old  order  and  retaining  the  old  order  only  for  its  use  to  his  new 
and  different  life.     Historically  the  man  of  deep  'inner'  life  at 


406  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  , 

any  time  has  himself  lived  and  helped  others  to  live  at  once  in  a 
larger  'outer'  world  and  in  a  different  world — different  for  the 
mediation,  different  by  the  'dimensional  variation.' 

So,  as  to  my  offense  of  dimensionalism,  far  from  needing  to 
get  behind  my  own  definition  of  the  term,  dimension,  which 
may  have  seemed  an  arbitrary  definition,  in  my  use  of- the  term 
I  can  not  have  made  any  serious  departure  from  anything  essen- 
tial to  the  ordinary  usage. 

Finally,  in  a  very  simple  sum  of  the  whole  story,  which  has 
been  told  here,  real  negation  does  possess  directional  value;  it 
brings,  not  change  by  mechanical  variation  nor  change  by 
causation  ah  extra  or  ex  nihilo,  but  change  by  mediation;  real 
change;  change,  as  may  now  be  added,  that  strikes  in  as  well  as 
out,  developing  inner  life  as  well  as  larger  and  different  spheres 
of  life;  change,  again,  that  really  leads  somewhere,  just  because 
always  mindful  of  a  context,  always  using  instead  of  just  opposing 
what  it  changes  and  always  being  at  once  inward  and  outward. 

Alfred  H.  Lloyd. 

University  of  Michigan. 


TYPES  OF  ORDER  AND  THE  SYSTEM   S. 

IT  is  a  commonplace  of  current  theory  that  mathematics  and 
.exact  science  in  general  is  capable  of  being  viewed  quite 
apart  from  any  concrete  subject  matter  or  any  system  of  physical 
facts  to  which  it  may  usefully  be  applied.  Geometry  need  not 
appeal  to  any  intuition  of  spacial  complexes  or  to  a  supposititious 
space  form ;  it  has  no  need  to  rely  upon  diagrams  or  make  use  of 
'constructions.'  Arithmetic  makes  no  necessary  reference  tO' 
the  sensible  character  of  collections  of  marbles  or  of  areas.  Dy- 
namics does  not  require  the  dubious  assumption  that  the  'moving 
particles '  of  which  it  treats  are  possible  of  experience  or  verifiable 
physical  entities.  The  'points'  of  geometry  and  kinematics,, 
the  'numbers'  of  arithmetic,  and  so  on,  are  simply  terms, — 
x's,  y's,  z's,  entities,  anything, — and  the  question  what  concrete 
things  may  be  successfully  regarded  as  such  x's  and  y's  is  a 
question  of  application  of  the  science,  not  one  which  need  be 
considered  while  the  system  itself  is  in  process  of  development. 

If  considerations  of  usefulness  and  of  application  are  important 
in  determining  what  assumptions  shall  be  made  or  what  systems 
developed,  still  such  pragmatic  considerations  are  principles  of 
selection  amongst  actual  and  possible  systems,  and  not  internal 
to  the  systems  themselves. 

An  arithmetic,  a  geometry,  a  kinematics,  is  thus  capable  of 
being  viewed  simply  as  a  complex  of  relations  and  operations 
(relations  of  relations)  which  obtain  amongst  entities  the  nature 
of  which,  apart  from  those  properties  which  follow  from  the 
relations  assumed,  is  wholly  indifferent.  Such  a  system  may, 
in  fact,  admit  of  various  interpretations  and  applications,  more 
or  less  useful,  all  of  which  satisfy  the  requirement  that  these 
relations  and  operations  be  valid.  As  Professor  Royce  is  accus- 
tomed to  put  it:  a  system  of  science  is  a  type  of  order,  the  dis- 
tinguishing characteristics  of  which  are  the  kind  of  relations — 
symmetrical  or  unsymmetrical,  transitive  or  intransitive,  etc., 
• — which  obtain  among  its  terms,  and  the  relations  of  these  re- 

407 


408  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

lations,  by  means  of  which  the  terms  are  'ordered'  and  the 
relations  'transformed.'^' 

The  growing  recognition  of  the  advantages  of  so  viewing 
systems  of  pure  science  is  one  of  the  prime  motives  for  the  present 
interest  in  symbolic  logic,  or  logistic.  For  logistic  is  the  science 
which  treats  of  types  of  order.  One  may  reach  the  particular 
type  of  order  which  it  is  desired  to  portray — the  arithmetic  or 
geometry — by  further  specification  of  that  minimum  order 
which  must  obtain  among  entities  if  they  are  to  'belong  together' 
in  a  set  or  system — the  order  of  logic.  This  can  be  done  in  a 
variety  of  ways,  which  may  be  roughly  divided  into  two  groups. 
These  two  methods  are  distinguished  by  the  fact  that  in  the  one 
case  the  'numbers'  of  arithmetic  or  'points'  of  geometry  are 
treated  as  (conceptual)  complexes  having  a  definite  internal 
structure,  while  in  the  other  the  'numbers'  or  'points'  are 
the  simple  and  indifferent  terms,  the  ac's  and  y's  of  the  system. 
The  former  mode  of  procedure  is  best  illustrated  by  the  investi- 
gations of  Russell's  Principles  of  Mathematics  and  Principia 
Mathematica  of  Russell  and  Whitehead.  The  other  method  is 
exemplified  by  Dedekind's  Was  sind  und  was  sollen  die  Zahlen, 
by  the  Ausdehnungslehre  of  Grassmann,  and  by  the  paper  of 
Mr.  A.  B.  Kempe,  "  On  the  Relation  between  the  Logical  Theory 
of  Classes  and  the  Geometrical  Theory  of  Points. "^  But  this 
second  method  appears  in  its  best  and  clearest  form  in  the  paper 
of  Professor  Royce  on  "The  Relation  of  the  Principles  of  Logic 
to  the  Foundations  of  Geometry."^  Each  of  these  procedures  has 
its  advantages  and  its  difficulties.  Of  late,  the  first  method  has 
received  a  disproportionate  share  of  attention.  For  this  reason, 
if  for  no  other,  I  deem  it  important  to  call  attention  to  the  second 
method  in  general  and  to  Professor  Royce's  paper — its  notable 
exemplification — in  particular. 

Professor  Royce  generalizes  upon  certain  relations  previously 

1 1  do  not  know  that  Professor  Royce  has  anywhere  printed  just  this  statement, 
and  my  way  of  putting  it  may  not  be  satisfactory  to  him,  but  Harvard  students 
in  "Philosophy  15"  will  remember  some  such  formulation. 

*  Proc.  London  Math.  Sac,  Vol.  21,  p.  147.  See  also  his  earlier  "Memoir  on  the 
Theory  of  Mathematical  Form,"  Phil.  Trans.,  Vol.  CLXXVII,  p.  i,  and  the  Note 
thereon,  Proc.  Royal  Soc.  Vol.  XLII,  p.  193. 

•  Trans.  Am.  Math.  Soc.  Vol.  6,  p.  353. 


No.  3.1  TYPES  OF  ORDER  AND   SYSTEM  S.  409 

pointed  out  by  Kempe,  in  the  paper  mentioned  above, — certain 
relations  which  are  fundamental  both  for  logic  and  for  geometry* 
li  ac  •  b  represent  a  triadic  relation  in  which  a  and  c  are  the 
'even'  members  and  b  is  the  'odd'  member,  ac  -bis  capable  of 
various  significant  interpretations.  If  a,  b,  and  c  represent 
areas,  ac  •  b  may  be  taken  to  symbolize  the  fact  that  b  includes 
whatever  area  is  common  to  a  and  c,  and  is  itself  included  in 
that  area  which  comprises  what  is  either  a  or  c  (or  both).  The 
same  relation  may  be  expressed  in  symbolic  logic  as 

ac  -<  b  -<  (o  +  c) ;     or ;     dbc  +  ahc  =  o. 

This  relation  may  be  so  assumed  that  it  has  the  essential  proper- 
ties of  serial  order.  Taking  it  in  the  form  just  given  and  pre- 
suming the  familiar  laws  of  the  algebra  of  logic,  if  ac  •  6  and 
ad  •  c,  then  also  ad  •  b  and  bd  •  c.  Hereupon  we  may  translate 
ac  •  6  by  '6  is  between  a  and  c,'  and  the  relation  will  then  have 
the  properties  of  the  points  a,  b,  c,  d,  in  that  order.  Further, 
if  a  be  regarded  as  an  origin  with  reference  to  which  precedence 
is  determined,  ac  •  b  may  represent  'b  precedes  c,'  and  ad  •  c 
that  'c  precedes  d.'  Since  ac  •  b  and  ad  •  c  together  give 
ad  •  b,  ii  'b  precedes  c'  and  'c  precedes  d,'  then  'b  precedes  d.' 
Hence  this  relation  has  the  essential  transitivity  of  serial  order, 
with  the  added  precision  that  it  retains  reference  to  the  origin 
from  which  'precedes'  is  determined. 

Professor  Royce  points  out  to  his  students  that  the  last  men- 
tioned property  of  this  relation  makes  possible  an  interpretation 
of  it  for  logical  classes  in  which  it  becomes  more  general  than  the 
inclusion  relation  of  ordinary  syllogistic  reasoning.  If  there 
should  be  inhabitants  of  Mars  whose  logical  sense  coincided  with 
our  own — so  that  any  conclusion  which  we  regarded  as  valid 
would  seem  valid  to  them,  and  vice  versa — but  whose  psychology 
was  somewhat  different  from  ours,  these  Martians  might  prefer 
to  remark  that  "b  is'  between'  a  and  c,"  rather  than  to  note  that 
"all  a  is  &  and  all  b  is  c."  These  Martians  might  then  carry  on 
successfully  all  their  reasoning  in  terms  of  this  triadic  '  between ' 
relation.  For  ac  •  b  meaning  dbc  +  abc  =  o  is  a  general  relation 
which,  in  the  special  case  where  a  is  the  "null"  class  contained  in 


410  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

every  class,  becomes  the  familiar  "&  is  included  in  c"  or  "all  h 
is  c."  By  virtue  of  the  transitivity  pointed  out  above,  oc  •  b 
and  od  •  c  together  give  od  •  b,  which  is  the  syllogism  in  Bar- 
bara, 'If  all  b  is  c  and  all  c  is  d,  then  all  b  is  d.'  Hence  these 
Martians  would  possess  a  mode  of  reasoning  more  compre- 
hensive than  our  own  and  including  our  own  as  a  special  case. 

The  triadic  relation  of  Kempe  is,  then,  a  very  powerful  one, 
and  capable  of  representing  the  most  fundamental  relations  not 
only  in  logic  but  in  all  those  departments  of  our  systematic  think- 
ing where  unsymmetrical  transitive  (serial)  relations  are  im- 
portant.^ In  terms  of  these  triads,  Kempe  states  the  properties 
of  his  'base  system,'  from  whose  order  the  relations  of  logic  and 
geometry  both  are  to  be  derived.  The  'base  system'  consists 
of  an  infinite  number  of  homogeneous  elements,  each  having 
an  infinite  number  of  equivalents.  It  is  assumed  that  triads 
are  disposed  in  this  system  according  to  the  following  laws:* 

1.  If  we  have  ab  •  p  and  cb  ■  q,  r  exists  such  that  we  have 
aq  •  r  and  cp  •  r. 

2.  If  we  have  ab  •  p  and  cp  •  r,  q  exists  such  that  we  have 
aq  '  r  and  cb  •  r? 

3.  If  we  have  ab  •  c,  and  a  =  b,  then  c  =  a  =  b. 

4.  If  a  =  b,  then  we  have  ac  •  b  and  be  •  a,  whatever  entity 
of  the  system  c  may  be. 

To  these,  Kempe  adds  a  fifth  postulate  which  he  calls  the 
'  law  of  continuity ' :  "  No  entity  is  absent  from  the  system  which 
can  consistently  be  present."  From  these  assumptions  and 
various  definitions  in  terms  of  the  triadic  relation,  Kempe  is 
able  to  derive  the  laws  of  the  symbolic  logic  of  classes  and  the 
most  fundamental  properties  of  geometrical  sets  of  points. 

'  It  should  be  pointed  out  that  the  triadic  relation  is  not  necessarily  unsym- 
metrical: ac'b  and  ab'c  may  both  be  true.  But  in  that  case  6  =  c,  as  may  be  veri- 
fied by  adding  the  equations  for  these  two  triads.  Further,  ab'b  is  always  true,  for 
any  a  and  b.  Thus  the  triadic  relation  represents  serial  order  with  the  qualification 
that  any  term  may  be  regarded  as  "preceding"  itself  or  as  "between"  itself  and 
any  other. 

*  See  Kempe's  paper,  "On  the  Relation  between,  etc.,"  pp.  148-149. 

'  If  the  reader  will  draw  the  triangle  abc  and  put  in  the  "betweens"  as  indicated, 
the  geometrical  significance  of  these  postulates  will  be  evident.  I  have  changed  a 
little  the  order  of  Kempe's  terms  so  that  both  i  and  2  will  be  illustrated  by  the 
same  triangle. 


No.  3.]  TYPES  OF  ORDER  AND   SYSTEM  S.  41I 

But  there  are  certain  dubious  features  of  Kempe's  procedure. 
As  Professor  Royce  notes,  the  'law  of  continuity'  makes  pos- 
tulates I  and  2  superfluous.  And  it  renders  entirely  obscure 
what  properties  the  system  may  have,  beyond  those  derivable 
from  the  other  postulates  without  this.  For  the  negative  form 
of  the  "law  of  continuity"  makes  it  impossible  to  assume  the 
existence  of  an  entity  without  first  investigating  all  the  properties 
of  all  the  other  entities  and  collections  in  the  system,  where  some 
of  these  other  entities  and  collections  exist  only  at  the  instance 
of  the  'law  of  continuity'  itself.  Consequently  the  existence  of 
any  entity  or  set,  not  explicitly  demanded  by  the  other  postu- 
lates, can  be  assumed  only  at  the  risk  of  later  inconsistency. 
Also,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Kempe  has  assumed  an  infinity  of 
elements  in  the  base  set,  there  are  certain  ambiguities  and  dif- 
ficulties about  the  application  of  his  principles  to  infinite  col- 
lections. 

In  Professor  Royce's  paper,  we  have  no  such  '  blanket  assump- 
tion' as  the  'law  of  continuity,'  and  the  relations  defined  may 
be  extended  without  difficulty  to  any  finite  or  infinite  set.  We 
have  here,  in  place  of  a  '  base  system '  and  triadic  relations,  the 
'system  S'  and  "O-coUections." 

The  system  S  consists  of  simple  and  homogeneous  elements. 
Collections  of  these  may  contain  any  finite  or  infinite  number  of 
elements;  and  any  element  may  be  repeated  any  number  of 
times;  so  that  x  and  x-repeated  may  be  considered  a  collection, 
X,  rc-repeated,  and  y  a  collection,  and  so  on.  Greek  letters  will 
signify  determinate  collections  in  S.     Collections  in  S  are  either 

0-collections  or  £-collections.     0( )  signifies  that  ( ) 

is  an  0-collection ;  E( )  that  ( )  is  an  £-collection, 

i.  e.,  that  it  is  not  an  0-collection.  Assuming  for  the  moment 
the  principles  of  the  algebra  of  logic,  Oipqrs  •  •  •)  signifies  that 
pqrs  •••-!-  pgrs  -  •  •  =0.  [Both  the  laws  of  the  algebra  of  logic 
and  the  properties  of  0-collections  which  render  them  thus  ex- 
pressible are,  of  course,  derived  from  the  postulates  and  not  as- 
sumed in  the  beginning.]  It  will  be  clear  that  the  order  of  terms 
in  any  0-collection  may  be  varied  at  will. 

'x  is  equivalent  to  y'  means  that  in  every  collection  in  which 


412  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

X  OT  y  occurs  the  other  may  be  substituted  for  it  and  the  col- 
lection in  question  still  remain  an  O-coUection. 

If  two  elements  in  2,  say  p  and  q,  are  such  that  0{pg)  is  true, 
then  p  and  g  are  said  to  be  obverses,  each  of  the  other.  Since  it 
will  follow  from  the  postulates  of  the  system  that  all  the  obverses 
of  a  given  element  are  mutually  equivalent,  and  that  every 
element  has  at  least  one  obverse,  a  'unique  representative'  of 
the  obverses  of  x  may  be  chosen  and  symbolized  by  x.  Pairs  of 
obverses  will  turn  out  to  have  the  properties  of  negatives  in  logic. 

Any  2  such  that  0{^q)  is  true,  is  called  a  complement  of  /3. 

Any  r  such  that  0{Pg)  and  0{gr)  are  both  true  is  called  a 
resultant  of  iS. 

The  postulates  of  the  system  S  are  as  follows:^ 

I.  If  0(a),  then  0(a7),  whatever  collection  7  may  be. 

II.  If,  whatever  element  &„  of  j8  be  considered,  0(6&„),  and  if 
0(/3)  is  also  true,  then  0(5). 

III.  There  exists  at  least  one  element  in  2. 

IV.  If  an  element  x  of  S  exists,  then  y  exists  such  that  x^y. 

V.  Whatever  pair  {p,  q)  exists  such  that  p  "¥  q,  r  exists  such 
that  while  both  0{rp)  and  0{rq)  are  false,  O(pqr)  is  true. 

VI.  If  w  exists  such  that  0{6w),  then  v  also  exists  such  that 
0(6v)  and  such,  too,  that  whatever  element  /„  of  6  be  considered 

0(viVtn). 

From  these  assumptions  the  whole  algebra  of  logic  can  be 
derived  in  such  wise  that  the  system  2  has  the  order  of  the  totality 
of  logical  classes.  To  see  this,  we  must  first  define  the  F-re- 
lation.  If  0{pqrs  •  •  • )  to  any  number  of  terms,  we  may  represent 
the  same  fact  by  iF(p/qsr  •  •  •),  (Fprfqs  •  •  ■),  (r/Fpqs  •  •  •)»  etc., 
where  the  rule  for  transforming  the  0-collection  into  the  cor- 
responding /^-collections  is  that  we  introduce  a  bar,  separating 
any  one  or  more  elements  of  the  0-collection  from  the  remainder, 
and  then  replace  each  of  the  elements  on  one  (either)  side  of  the 
bar  by  its  obverse.^  Since  the  order  of  terms  in  O-coUections  is 
indiff'erent,  terms  on  the  same  side  of  the  bar  in  any  F-relation 

*  See  p.  367  of  the  paper. 

'  This  definition  presupposes  the  proof  of  the  principle  that  if  0{pqr  .  .),  then 
also  0(pqP  .  .),  as  well  as  the  proofs  which  make  possible  the  notation  pqr,  ex- 
plained above.     See  pages  367-371  of  the  paper. 


No.  3.]  TYPES  OF  ORDER  AND  SYSTEM  S.  413 

are  independent  of  the  particular  order  in  which  they  are  written. 
Also,  it  follows  immediately  from  the  definition  of  the  relation 
that  F(pqlrs)  and  F(pqfrs)  are  equivalent.  Where  the  F-relation 
holds  for  three  terms,  it  turns  out  to  be  identical  with  the  tri- 
adic  relation  of  Kempe,  and  the  Kempean  ac  •  b  is  thus  a  special 
case  of  the  7^-relation,  namely  F{blac),  or  F{acjh),  or  F(a/bc),  or 
F(afbc),  or  F{bfca),  etc.,  all  of  which  are  equivalent.  We  may, 
then,  define  the  "illative"  relation, — "b  is  included  in  c"  where 
b  and  c  are  classes,  "b  implies  c"  where  b  and  c  are  propositions, 
"b  precedes  c,"  where  b  and  c  are  points  or  terms  in  one-dimen- 
sional array, — as  the  special  case  of  any  of  the  above  i^-relation' 
in  which  a  is  the  "zero  element,"  or  "null  class,"  or  "origin." 
But  these  F-relations  are  equivalent,  by  definition,  to  0(abc) 
and  0{abc).  Hence  b  -<„  c  may  be  defined  to  mean  0(abc)  and 
6  -<  c  to  mean  that  O(obc).  Thus  in  terms  of  the  totally  sym- 
metrical 0-relation,  the  unsymmetrical,  transitive  dyadic  rela- 
tion which  characterizes  both  serial  order  and  syllogistic  reason- 
ing can  be  defined. 

As  is  well  known,  the  entire  algebra  of  logic  may  be  derived 
from  a  class  K,  the  idea  of  negation,  and  the  illative  relation, 
hence  also  in  terms  of  the  system  2  and  0-collections.  The 
'zero  element' or 'null  class' is  any  arbitrarily  chosen  member 
with  reference  to  which  all  illative  relations  are  supposed  to  be 
specified.  Such  an  element  o  itself  bears  the  illative  relation  to 
any  other,  x,  since  F(ox/o),  or  O(oox)  holds  for  any  element  x. 
The  element  i,  the  "universe"  of  the  algebra  of  logic,  may  then 
be  defined  as  the  negative  or  obverse  of  the  o  chosen.  In  the 
system  2,  o  and  i  do  not  difi^er  from  any  other  pair  of  obverses, 
apart  from  the  arbitrary  choice  of  a  reference  element  for  illative 
relations.  The  logical  product  of  two  terms,  x  and  y,  is  then 
definable  as  any  P  such  that  F{ox/P),  FioyjP),  and  F(xy/P). 
The  logical  sum  of  x  and  y  is  definable  as  any  S  such  that 
F(ix/S),  Fiiy/S),  and  FixyjS).  P,  so  defined,  will  be  such  that 
P  -<  x  and  P  -<  y,  while  any  w  such  that  w-<  x  and  w-<  y 
will  be  also  such  that  w  -<  P.  For  S  it  will  be  true  that  x-<  S 
and  y  -<  S,  and  any  v  such  that  x-<  v  and  y-<  v  is  also  such 
that  S-<  V.     S  and  P  are,  in  fact,  the  "lower  limit"  and  "upper 


414  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

limit,"  with  reference  to  the  chosen  zero  element,  of  all  the 
F-resultants  of  x  and  y,  an  F-resultant  being  any  z  such  that 
F{xylz).  These  definitions  for  the  product  and  sum  of  two 
elements  may  be  extended  immediately  to  any  number  of  ele- 
ments, or  any  collection  j8,  if  we  replace  x  and  y  by  "any  element 
of  j8,  however  chosen."  The  usual  laws  of  the  algebra  of  logic, 
connecting  smns  and  products,  terms  and  their  negatives,  and  the 
elements  o  and  i  may  then  be  verified  for  the  system  S.  This 
order  of  logical  entities  is  contained  in  S  in  an  infinite  variety  of 
ways,  since  any  pair  of  obverses  may  be  arbitrarily  chosen  for 
I  and  o.  F- relations  and  0- relations,  not  confined  to  dyads  and 
triads,  are  capable  of  representing  this  order  in  a  generalized  form. 

There  is,  moreover,  a  wealth  of  order  in  the  system  which  the 
algebra  of  logic,  even  in  terms  of  any  polyadic  relation,  does  not 
require.  It  is  this  difference  which  renders  the  system  S  capable 
of  being  viewed  as  a  generalized  space  form. 

It  follows  from  postulate  V  that  if  ^  #=  ff,  then  there  is  an 
element  'between'  p  and  g.  The  postulate  states:  Whatever 
pair  {p,  q)  exists  such  that  p  ^  q,  r  also  exists  such  that  while 
both  0{rp)  and  0(rq)  are  false,  O(pqr)  is  true.  O(pqr)  or  F(pq/r) 
gives,  by  definition  of  the  illative  relation,  r-<qp  and  r-<pg) 
or  r  is  "between"  p  and  q.  And  r  must  be  distinct  from  p  and 
q  both,  for  otherwise,  it  follows  from  the  definition  of  obverses, 
one  of  the  two  0{rp)  and  0{rq)  will  be  true.  Hence  postulate 
V  may  be  restated  in  the  form :  For  every  pair  of  distinct  elements, 
there  exists  an  element,  distinct  from  both,  between  them.  It 
is  at  once  obvious  that  if  the  elements  be  "points,"  and  p-<oq 
mean  that  p  is  between  o  and  q,  postulate  V  requires  that  the 
order  of  points  in  2  should  be  dense  in  every  direction  (with 
reference  to  every  pair  of  points).  It  is  further  clear  that  if 
we  take  any  pair  of  distinct  points,  o  and  z,  and  postulate  t  be- 
tween them,  we  shall  be  required  to  postulate  also  r  between 
0  and  t,v  between  t  and  z,  and  so  on.  Owing  to  the  transitivity 
of  the  illative  relation,  we  are  thus  required  to  postulate  for  every 
pair  (o,  z)  an  infinite  number  of  elements  in  the  order  o-<or 
-<ot-<oV-<oZ.  Such  an  ordered  collection  is  continuous. 
We  have  already  seen  that  it  is  dense.     It  remains  to  see  that  it 


No.  3.]  TYPES  OF  ORDER  AND  SYSTEM  S.  415 

satisfies  the  requirement  that  every  fundamental  segment  has  a 
limit.  Consider  two  selections  from  the  collection,  k  and  X, 
such  that  if  k  is  any  element  of  k,  every  element  j  such  that 
j  -<  o  k  belongs  to  k,  and  every  element  /,  such  that  for  every 
element  k  oi  k  l-<o  k  is  false,  belongs  to  X.  There  is,  then,  an 
element,  call  it  S,  such  that,  for  every  element  ^  in  k,  ^  -<oS, 
and  if  /  is  any  element  such  that,  for  every  element  k  of  k,  k-<  oh 
then  S  -<  o  I-  Such  an  element  5  is  the  '  sum '  or  '  upper 
limit'  of  K,  defined  above.  Hence  every  fundamental  segment 
has  a  limit.  Any  collection  thus  characterized  by  a  transitive 
unsymmetrical  relation  and  continuous  order  deserves  to  be 
called  a  'line.'  Every  pair  of  distinct  elements  in  S  determines 
such  a  line. 

For  every  pair  of  distinct  points,  0  and  g,  there  exists  p  such 
that  F(oq/p)  and  hence  0(oqp).  By  the  definition  of  the  F- 
relation,  if  0{oqp),  then  Fioq/P).  Hence  if  0  and  q  determine  a 
line,  0  '  ■  •  p  •  •  •  q,  there  exists  also  a  line,  5  •  •  •  p  •  •  •  q  or 
q  ' '  •  p  ■  ■  •  0,  in  which  appear  the  obverses  of  all  the  elements  in 
0  •  •  •  p  '  •  •  q.  But  it  also  follows  from  0{oqp)  that  F(opfq), 
or  Q.-<o  p.  Thus  if  o  •  •  •  Z  •  •  •  z  be  any  line  determined  with 
reference  to  an  "origin"  0,  the  line  containing  the  obverses  of 
the  elements  oi  o  •  •  -  I  -  -  -  z  may  be  determined  by  reference  to 
the  same  origin.  And  if  two  elements  of  0  •  •  -  I  •  -  -  z,  say  m 
and  n,  are  such  that  m-<on,  then  n-<om.  If  we  further 
consider  the  order  of  elements  in  both  lines,  o  •  •  •  I  •  •  •  z,  and 
z  •  •  •  I  •  •  •  o,  with  reference  to  the  origin  0  and  its  obverse  o, 
the  two  lines  appear  as  a  single  line  which  passes  from  0  to  o 
through  /,  and  from  o  back  to  0  through  /.  Let  m  and  n  be  any 
two  elements  of  o  •  -  •  I  --  -  z  such  that  F{onlm) .  We  have 
m-<on.  Hence  n-<om.  But  if  we  have  F(onlm),  then  also 
0{onm)  and  so  F{om/n).  Hence  n-<md.  Thus  any  two  ele- 
ments, in  and  n,  such  that  m  is  between  0  and  n,  are  also  such 
that  n  is  between  m  and  0.  From  the  transitivity  of  the  illative 
relation,  m-<oO.  But  if  m-<od,  then  from  the  above 
m-<oO.  Thus  we  have  the  continuous  line,  o  •  •  -  m  ■  •  •  n 
■••d''-n''-m--'0,ord-''n---m''-o-'-m'--n'-'d, 
which  has  so  far  the  character  of  the  projective  line  with  0  as 


4l6  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

origin  and  o  the  point  at  infinity.  And  if  m,  n,  r,  occur  in  that 
order  in  one  'direction'  from  the  origin,  then  m,  n,  r,  occur  in 
that  order  in  the  'opposite  direction'  from  the  origin. 

Certain  further  characteristics  of  order  in  the  system  may  be 
mentioned  briefly.  In  general,  lines  such  as  those  considered 
above  may  "intersect"  any  number  of  times.  From  the  de- 
finition of  obverses,  0(aa)  and  0{cc)  always  hold.  But  by 
postulate  I,  if  0(aa),  then  0{aap),  and  hence  F{ad/p),  for  any 
element  p.  Similarly,  if  0{cc),  then  F(cc/p).  Thus  collections 
consisting  of  the  i^-resultants  of  difi^erent  pairs  may  have  any 
number  of  elements  in  common.  But  in  terms  of  such  operations 
as  were  in  question  in  the  definitions  of  'sums'  and  'products,' 
sets  of  resultants  may  be  determined  such  that  they  have  one 
and  only  one  element  in  common.  Thus  certain  selected  lines 
in  the  system  intersect  once  and  once  only.  There  are  any  num- 
ber of  such  sets. 

In  general,  if  any  pair  of  elements  in  a  set  are  obverses  of  one 
another,  all  the  other  elements  of  the  set  will  be  resultants  of 
this  pair,  and  their  entire  array  will  be  "one-dimensional"  so 
far  as  dimensionality  may  be  attributed  to  such  a  collection. 
The  problem  of  selecting  sets  suitable  for  any  space  form — any 
w-dimensional  array — is  the  problem  of  selecting  so  that  O- 
collections  will  be  excluded.  Such  sets,  containing  no  obverses, 
are  the  'flat  collections'  of  Kempe.  As  he  pointed  out,  the 
excluded  obverses  will  form  an  exactly  similar  set,  so  that 
'spaces'  come  in  pairs  somewhat  suggesting  companion  hemi- 
spheres. In  terms  of  "flat  collections,"  one-dimensional,  two- 
dimensional,  w-dimensional  arrays,  may  be  specified  in  any 
number  of  ways. 

Once  the  order  of  the  system  2  is  generated  in  terms  of  0-relations 
and  F-relations,  the  determination  of  such  more  specialized  types 
of  order  is  a  problem  of  selection  only.  In  the  words  of  Professor 
Royce,  "Wherever  a  linear  series  is  in  question,  wherever  an 
origin  of  coordinates  is  employed,  wherever  'cause  and  effect,' 
'ground  and  consequence,'  orientation  in  space  or  direction  of 
tendency  in  time  are  in  question,  the  dyadic  asymmetrical  re- 
lations involved  are  essentially  the  same  as  the  relation  here 


No.  3.]  TYPES  OF  ORDER  AND   SYSTEM  S.  417 

symbolized  by  p-<y  q.  This  expression,  then,  is  due  to  certain 
of  our  best  established  practical  instincts  and  to  some  of  our  best 
fixed  intellectual  habits.  Yet  it  is  not  the  only  expression  for 
the  relations  involved.  It  is  in  several  respects  inferior  to  the 
more  direct  expression  in  terms  of  o-relations.  .  .  .  When,  in 
fact,  we  attempt  to  describe  the  relations  of  the  system  S  merely 
in  terms  of  the  antecedent-consequent  relation,  we  not  only 
limit  ourselves  to  an  arbitrary  choice  of  origin,  but  miss  the 
power  to  survey  at  a  glance  relations  of  more  than  a  dyadic,  or 
triadic  character."^ 

With  this  hasty  and  fragmentary  survey  of  the  system  S,  we 
may  turn  to  considerations  of  method.  It  was  suggested  in  the 
introduction  that  the  procedure  here  exemplified  differs  in  nota- 
ble ways  from  the  method  of  such  studies  as  those  of  Principia 
Mathematica.  In  that  work,  we  are  presented  at  the  outset 
with  a  simple,  though  general,  order — the  order  of  elementary 
propositions  so  related  to  one  another  that  one  is  the  negative 
of  another,  two  may  be  such  that  at  least  one  of  them  is  true, 
and  so  on.  In  terms  of  these  fundamental  relations,  more  special 
types  of  order — various  branches  of  mathematics — are  built 
up  by  progressive  complication.  In  some  respects  this  is  the 
necessary  character  of  deductive  procedures  in  general ;  in  other 
respects  it  is  not.  In  particular,  this  method  differs  from  that 
employed  by  Mr.  Kempe  and  Professor  Royce  in  that  terms, 
as  well  as  relations,  of  later  sections  are  themselves  complexes 
of  the  relations  at  first  assumed.  The  complication  thus  made 
necessary  can  hardly  be  appreciated  by  those  who  would  regard 
a  number,  for  instance,  as  a  simple  entity.  To  illustrate:  In 
Principia  Mathematica,  the  "cardinal  number"  of  x  is  the  class 
of  referents  of  the  relation  'similar  to'  where  x  is  the  relatum.^ 
The  'class  of  referents'  of  any  relation  R  is  defined  as  a  such 
that  a  is  identical  with  x  such  that,  for  some  y,  x  has  the  relation 
R  to  y.  'Relatum'  is  similarly  defined.  'w  is  identical  with 
«'  means  that,  for  any  predicative  function  (p,  tpm  implies  <pn. 
I  do  not  pause  upon  'predicative  function.'      a  is  'similar  to* 

^  Pages  381-2  of  the  paper. 

*  I  shall,  perhaps,  be  pardoned  for  translating  the  symbolism, — provided  I  do 
not  make  mistakes. 


4l8  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

j8  means  that,  for  some  one-to-one  relation  R,  a  is  identical  with 
the  class  of  referents  of  R  and  /3  is  identical  with  the  class  of 
relata  of  R.  A  'one-to-one'  relation  is  a  relation  S  such  that 
the  class  of  referents  of  S  is  contained  in  i  and  the  class  of  relata 
of  5  is  contained  in  i  .^  *  i '  is  defined  as  a  such  that,  for  some 
X,  a  is  identical  with  the  x.  '  The  x'  is  my  attempt  to  translate 
the  untranslateable.  The  attempt  to  analyze  'is  contained  in' 
would  require  much  more  space  than  we  can  afford.  But  sup- 
posing  the  analysis  complete,  we  discover  that  the  'cardinal 

number  oi  x'  is ,  where is  the  definition  first  given, 

with  all  the  terms  in  it  replaced  by  their  definition,  the  terms  in 
these  replaced  by  their  definition,  and  so  on.  All  this  complexity 
is  internal  to  the  terms  of  arithmetic.  And  only  when  this  process 
is  complete  can  any  properties  or  relations  of  'the  cardinal 
number  of  x'  be  demonstrated.  An  advantage  of  this  method 
is  that  the  step  from  one  order  to  another  'based  upon  it'  is 
always  such  as  to  make  clear  the  connection  between  the  two. 
It  preserves  automatically  the  hierarchic  arrangement  of  various 
departments  of  exact  thinking.  The  process  of  developing  this 
hierarchy  is  tedious  and  taxes  our  analytic  powers,  but  there  is 
always  the  prospect  of  assured  success  if  we  can  perform  the 
initial  analysis  involved  in  the  definitions.  But  the  disadvan- 
tages of  this  complexity  can  hardly  be  overemphasized.  It  is 
forbidding  to  those  whose  interests  are  simply  'mathematical' 
or  '  scientific '  in  the  ordinary  sense.  Such  a  work  as  Principia 
Mathematica  runs  great  risk  of  being  much  referred  to,  little 
read,  and  less  understood. 

In  contrast  with  such  complexity,  we  have,  by  the  method 
of  Mr.  Kempe  and  Professor  Royce,  an  order  completely  gener- 
ated at  the  start,  and  such  that  the  various  special  orders  con- 
tained in  it  may  be  arrived  at  simply  by  selection.  Little  or  no 
complication  within  the  terms  is  required.  Involved  as  the 
structure  of  the  system  2  may  seem,  it  is,  by  comparison,  a 
marvel  of  simplicity  and  compact  neatness.     With  this  method, 

'  More  accurately,  "  every  member  of  the  class  of  referents  of  5  is  contained  in 
I,  and  every  member  of  the  class  of  relata  of  5  is  contained  in  i,"  because  all 
relations  are,  in  Principia  Mathematica,  taken  in  the  abstract. 


No.  3.]  TYPES  OF  ORDER  AND   SYSTEM  S.  419 

there  seems  to  be  no  assurance  in  advance  that  any  hierarchic 
relations  of  different  orders  will  be  disclosed,  but  we  shall  cer- 
tainly discover,  and  without  difficulty,  whatever  analogies  exist 
between  various  orders.  Again,  this  method  relies  much  more 
upon  devices  which  may  be  not  at  all  obvious.  It  may  not  tax 
severely  the  analytic  powers,  but  it  is  certain  to  tax  the  ingenuity. 

In  another  important  respect,  advantage  seems  to  lie  with  this 
method.  One  would  hardly  care  to  invent  a  new  geometry  by 
the  hierarchic  procedure,  or  expect  to  discover  one  by  its  use. 
We  have  to  know  where  we  are  going  or  we  shall  not  get  there 
by  this  road.  By  contrast.  Professor  Royce's  is  the  method  of 
the  path-finder.  The  prospect  of  the  novel  is  here  much  greater. 
The  system  S  may — probably  does — contain  new  continents  of 
order  whose  existence  we  do  not  even  suspect.  And  some  chance 
transformation  may  put  us,  suddenly  and  unexpectedly,  in  posses- 
sion of  such  previously  unexplored  fields. 

Which  of  the  two  methods  will  prove,  in  the  end,  more  powerful, 
no  one  can  say  at  present.  The  whole  subject  is  too  new  and 
undeveloped.  Certainly  it  is  to  be  desired  that  the  direct  and 
exploratory  method  be  increasingly  made  use  of,  and  that  the 
advantages  of  studying  very  general  types  of  order,  such  as  the 
system  S,  be  better  understood. 

C.  I.  Lewis. 

University  of  California. 


INTERPRETATION  AS  A  SELF-REPRESENTATIVE 
PROCESS 

TDROFESSOR  ROYCE'S  doctrine  of  interpretation  has  re- 
-*-  ceived  as  yet  but  little  appreciation.  Recent  critics  of 
the  Problem  of  Christianity,  which  contains  the  first  formulation 
of  that  doctrine,  have  either  failed  to  understand  its  significance 
or  have  been  unable  to  relate  it  to  Professor  Royce's  earlier 
teachings.  This  note  is  intended  to  call  attention  to  interpre- 
tation as  a  self-representative  process. 

What  interpretation  precisely  means  must  first  be  made  clear. 
In  agreement  with  the  late  Charles  Peirce,  Professor  Royce 
rejects  the  traditional  dichotomy  of  the  cognitive  processes  into 
perception  and  conception,  and  of  the  objects  of  knowledge  into 
particulars  and  universals,  appropriate  to  these  processes. 
There  are  objects  which  can  be  called  neither  'things'  nor 
'universals'  and  which  are  known  by  neither  perception  nor 
conception.  Such  objects  are  meanings,  aptly  called  by  Charles 
Peirce,  'signs,'  i.  e.,  signs  of  meaning.^  The  term  sign  may 
be  taken  literally.  The  sign  'Keep  off  the  grass,'  for  instance, 
is  both  a  datum  which  can  be  perceived,  and  it  has  a  general  or 
abstract  character  which  may  be  conceived,  yet  as  a  meaningjul 
sign  it  appeals  to  a  difi^erent  mode  of  cognition.  The  sign 
addresses  itself  to  one  who  can  read  and  understand  its  meaning. 
One  not  familiar  with  the  English  language  can  upon  seeing  the 
sign  still  perceive  a  thing  and  conceive  a  universal  quality  or 
character  belonging  to  it,  but  the  meaning  of  the  sign  will  escape 
him,  despite  adequate  perception  and  conception.  The  knowl- 
edge of  the  sign  qua  sign,  i.  e.,  qua  meaning,  is,  according  to 
Professor  Royce,  a  knowledge  sui  generis.     It  is  interpretation. 

Interpretation  not  only  differs  from  perception  and  conception 
in  that  its  objects  are  meanings,  but  it  is  distinguished  from  them 

1  Professor  Royce's  definition  of  a  sign:  "A  sign  is  an  object  whose  being  con- 
sists in  the  fact  that  the  sign  calls  for  an  interpretation."  The  Problem  of  Chris- 
tianity   >  ew  York.  1913,  Vol.  II,  p.  283. 

420 


INTERPRE  TA  TION.  42 1 

in  other  respects.  While  perception  and  conception  involve 
but  two  terms — the  traditional  subject-object  relation — inter- 
pretation requires  three  terms.  The  triadic  form  of  interpre- 
tation makes  of  the  knowledge  of  meanings  a  social  enterprise. 
A  'sign'  must  be  interpreted  hy  some  one  to  some  one.  The 
interpreter  'mediates'  between  the  sign  calling  for  an  inter- 
pretation and  the  one  to  whom  the  interpretation  is  addressed, 
who,  by  analogy  with  an  addressee,  may  be  called  the  'inter- 
pretee.'  The  three  terms  may  represent  three  different  mental 
states  within  the  same  individual,  or  sign,  interpreter  and  inter- 
pretee  may  be  three  different  beings  or  groups  of  beings.^  In- 
terpretation is  a  name  for  a  complex  process  constituted  by  a 
triadic  non-symmetrical  relation.  This  'social'  theory  of 
knowledge  which  requires  three  terms  of  a  different  kind  and 
order  for  the  cognition  of  any  meaning  has  led  Professor  Royce, 
not  indeed  to  alter  any  of  his  earlier  views  concerning  the 
'world'  and  the  'individual, 'but  to  deepen  and  to  clarify  them. 

In  yet  another  important  respect  interpretation  differs  from 
the  two  traditional  cognitive  processes.  Both  perception  and 
conception  terminate  in  their  objects,  while  interpretation  is 
interminable.  When  perception  meets  its  particular  and  con- 
ception its  universal,  the  knowing  process  has  come  to  an  end. 
A  new  particular  and  a  new  universal  are  required  for  the  further 
operation  of  perception  and  conception.  Interpretation,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  endless,  for  the  accomplished  interpretation  is 
itself  a  'sign,'  a  meaning,  which  requires  a  fresh  interpretative 
act,  the  result  of  which  is  in  turn  a  new  object  for  still  further 
interpretation,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum. 

It  is  not  mere  endlessness,  however,  which  constitutes  the 
nature  of  interpretation.  Its  endlessness  is  one  which  any  self- 
representative  process  exemplifies.  It  is  the  endlessness  of  a 
determinate  infinite  which  Professor  Royce  has  expounded  in  the 
"Supplementary  Essay"  to  The  World  and  the  Individual. 
Professor  Royce  has  himself  not  emphasized  the  self-representa- 
tive character  of  interpretation.     He  merely  hints  at  it  when, 

1  This  doctrine  maintains — perhaps  no  other  czm — that  the  knowledge  of  the 
'alter'  is  as  certain  or  uncertain  as  the  knowledge  of  one's  'self,'  and  vice  versa. 


422  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

for  instance,  he  says,  "By  itself,  the  process  of  interpretation 
calls,  in  ideal,  for  an  infinite  sequence  of  interpretation."^  That 
any  interpretation  when  once  initiated  generates  by  virtue  of  its 
own  nature  an  infinite  series  of  interpretations  having  the  re- 
lational structure  of  a  self-representative  system  is  implied, 
however,  in  the  very  meaning  of  the  process. 

The  development  "of  an  infinite  multitude  out  of  the  expres- 
sion of  a  single  purpose"^  which  characterizes  a  self-representa- 
tive system  is  precisely  what  the  single  purpose  of  interpreting 
a  'sign,'  i.  e.,  knowing  a  meaning,  exemplifies.  The  'sign' 
which  it  is  my  purpose  completely  to  interpret  gives  rise  to  a 
"recurrent  operation  of  thought"  such  as,  "if  once  finally  ex- 
pressed, would  involve  ...  an  infinite  variety  of  serially  ar- 
ranged facts  corresponding  to  the  purpose  in  question."^  Let  it 
be  my  purpose  to  interpret  completely  the  meaning  of  any 
'sign.'  The  result  of  the  triadic  process  of  interpretation — 
the  expression  of  the  purpose — is  a  new  object  of  knowledge,  a 
'sign,'  calling  for  the  same  interpretative  act,  the  result  of 
which  as  a  new  object  of  knowledge,  a  'sign,'  requiring  once 
more  the  same  interpretative  act,  etc.,  etc.*  The  self-repre- 
sentative character  of  interpretation  may  be  expressed  symboUc- 
ally  thus: — 

Let  X  =  any  sign ; 
"    y  =    "    interpreter; 
"    z  =    "    interpretee.^ 

Then  R{x,  y,  z)  =  any  interpretation,  i.  e.,  the  triadic  relation 
which  unites  the  sign,  the  interpreter,  and  the  interpretee 
into  a  complex. 

But  the  triad,  i?(x,  y,  z),  is  in  turn  a  sign,  requiring  interpre- 
tation. 

»  The  Problem  of  Chrislianity.  Vol.  II,  p.  150.     The  italics  are  mine. 

*  The  World  and  the  Individual,  New  York,  1912,  Vol.  I,  p.  503. 
» Ibid.,  p.  507. 

*  It  must  here  be  noted  that  Professor  Royce  uses  the  term  interpretation  to 
indicate  both  the  act  of  interpreting  and  the  result  of  such  act.  To  say  that  inter- 
pretation as  a  '  sign '  calls  for  a  fresh  interpretation  is  to  say  that  the  result  of  an 
act  of  interpretation  requires  a  fresh  interpretative  act.  This  result,  though  now  a 
single  'sign,'  is  logically  the  compound  of  previous  sign,  interpreter,  and  inter- 
pretee. 

» It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  y  and  z  may  be  the  same  individual. 


No.  3.]  INTERPRETATION.  423 

The  new  complex  will  be  R[R{x,  y,  z)]y',  z'.  This  again 
requires  a  new  interpretation  which  can  be  represented 
R{[R{x,  y,  z)]y',  z'}y",  z" .  This  process  goes  on  indefinitely. 
The  whole  series  will  run:  R{x,  y,  z).  R\R{x,  y,  z)\y' ,  z', 
R[[R{x,  y,  z)]y',  z'\y",  z".  R[{[R{x,  y,  z)]y',  z']y",  z"\y"\ 
z'" .  .  .  ?■  Each  term  is  a  triad  one  of  whose  terms  is  the  term 
preceding  the  triad  in  question  in  the  series;  thus  the  series  is 
self-representative.  Or,  the  'chain'  of  interpretations  thus 
generated  is  a  self-representative  series,  each  of  whose  members 
is  a  triad,  one  term  of  which  is  the  triad's  preceding  term  in  the 
series.  It  will  be  readily  seen  that  this  self-representative  series 
fulfills  all  the  conditions  of  self-representation  demanded  in 
the  "Supplementary  Essay"  to  The  World  and  the  Individual, 
Vol.  I,  pp.  508  ff. 

The  self-representative  character  of  interpretation  shows  at 
once  that  Professor  Royce's  new  epistemology  is  no  radical 
departure  from  his  previous  theory.  The  novelty  of  his  doctrine 
consists  in  his  insistence  that  the  knowledge  of  meaning  is  different 
from  the  knowledge  of  'things'  and  the  knowledge  of  'uni- 
versal.' The  knowledge  of  meaning  is  a  triadic  process,  but 
the  triadic  process  as  one  purpose  requires  for  its  expression  an 
infinite  manifold.  Thus,  Professor  Royce's  earlier  solution  of 
the  problems  of  the  One  and  the  Many,  of  the  Infinite,  of  the 
World,  and  of  the  Individual  receives  from  his  theory  of  Inter- 
pretation additional  confirmation. 

J.  LOEWENBERG. 
University  of  California. 
1  This  is  mere  symbolism;  there  is  no  proof,  no  rigid  logical  definition  attempted. 


ON    THE    APPLICATION    OF    GRAMMATICAL    CATE- 
GORIES TO  THE  ANALYSIS  OF  DELUSIONS. 

Abstract. 
Remarks  on  Royce's  sociological  and  logical  influences.  The  general  nature 
of  Royce's  logical  seminary:  choice  of  topics.  As  to  the  superposition  of  gram- 
matical upon  psychiatric  concepts,  the  reason  for  choosing  delusions.  Delu- 
sions in  the  Danvers  symptom  catalogue  and  their  place  in  nosological  entities. 
The  neglect  of  delusions  by  logic  and  psychology.  James's  handling  of  de- 
lusions probably  over-sensationalistic.  Probable  value  of  the  psychopatho- 
logical  point  of  view  as  illustrated  in  James's  later  work.  Analysis  of  certain 
instances  of  somatic  delusion.  Analysis  of  certain  instances  of  environmental 
and  personal  delusions.  Contrasting  results  of  the  somatic  and  personal  group 
analyses.  Anatomical  intimations  that  the  frontal  lobes  are  involved  more  espe- 
cially in  disorder  of  personality.  Function  of  impression  more  likely  to  employ 
posterior-lying  nerve  tissue;  function  of  expression,  anterior-lying.  Two  groups 
of  delusions  in  dementia  praecox,  one  associated  with  frontal  lobe  anomalies  or 
lesions,  the  other  with  parietal:  the  latter  delusions  fantastic.  The  pragmatic 
element  in  most  delusions  invites  comparison  with  the  grammatical  categories  of 
the  verbs.  Delbruck  vs.  Wundt  re  grammar  and  psychology.  Non-identity  of 
these  topics.  The  four  fundamental  moods  (imperative,  indicative,  subjunctive, 
optative).  .Subjunctive  the  mood  of  will,  optative  that  of  wish.  'Stratified' 
development  of  these  moods.  Their  relation  to  human  character  types.  Relation 
of  grammatical  moods  to  logical  modality  (necessary,  impossible,  contingent, 
possible).  Importance  of  getting  a  clear  conception  of  beUefs  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  behever.  Category  of  the  voice  (active,  passive,  middle).  Situation 
passive  with  many  hallucinations,  perhaps  reflexive  in  the  case  of  Gedankenlaut- 
werden.  Involvement  of  the  first  person.  Importance  of  distinguishing  the  second 
from  the  third  person  from  the  patient's  point  of  view.  Gender  and  number  of 
persons  involved  in  a  delusional  situation.  Do  essentially  tetradic  situations 
occur,  at  least  where  the  number  of  persons  involved  is  manifestly  four?  Tense- 
distinctions.  Probability  that  most  moods  with  special  names  in  different  lan- 
guages fall  toward  either  the  subjunctive  (e.  g.,  potential,  conditional)  or  the  opta- 
tive {e.  g.,  desiderative,  precative,  jussive?).  Pragmatic  delusions  as  subjunctive 
'precipitates.'     Fantastic  delusions  as  optative  'precipitates.'     Summary. 

I. 

T  AM  peculiarly  glad  to  speak  here  in  honor  of  Royce.  Es- 
-^  pecially  in  recent  years  I  have  felt,  in  my  professional  work 
as  neuropathologist  and  as  psychiatrist,  the  effects  of  Royce's 
teaching,  more  particularly  of  his  graduate  teaching  in  the  logical 
seminary,  which  I  have  followed  omitting  a  few  years  only  since 

424 


APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         425 

1897.  I  well  remember  when  my  training  with  James  and  Royce 
was  regarded  as  something  of  a  disability:  it  was  questioned 
whether  a  man  with  philosophical  antecedents  could  do  the  work 
of  an  interne  in  pathology!  Nowadays  we  have  pretty  well 
worked  through  that  period  to  one  of  greater  tolerance. 

I  want  to  illustrate  in  this  paper  a  concrete  effect  of  Royce's 
logical  seminary  through  the  employment  of  its  comparative 
method  in  a  certain  special  field  of  psychiatry  wherein  are  to  be 
applied  some  categories  derived  from  a  portion  of  the  science  of 
grammar. 

But  first  a  word  as  to  broader  effects  of  Royce's  work.  I  do 
not  speak  of  his  metaphysics,  except  as  it  has  relation  to  the 
social  consciousness.  My  colleague,  Richard  Cabot,  has  already 
to-day  spoken  of  the  Royce  influence  upon  himself.  In  more 
limited  ways,  I  must  own  to  identical  influences,  making  for  a 
greater  interest  in  social  service  than  is  common  among  physicians. 
And  indeed  the  sociological  influences  of  Royce  have  been  wide,  as 
may  be  seen  in  the  chapter  "Of  Society"^  in  the  fourth  volume  of 
Merz's  A  History  of  European  Thought  in  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
1914.  Therein  Merz  sets  forth  how  "no  subject  of  philosophical 
or  scientific  interest  has  been  more  profoundly  affected  by  it  [the 
spirit  of  comprehension  in  opposition  to  that  of  definition,  or  as 
later  termed,  the  'synoptic'  tendency]  than  the  study  of  man  in 
his  individual  and  collective  existence."  After  then  speaking  of 
new  definitions  of  the  social  'Together,'  of  the  'social  self  as 
opposed  to  the  subjective,  Merz  ascribes  to  Royce  "the  clearest 
indication  of  this  doctrine,"  quoting  a  passage  from  the  papers  of 
Royce  contained  in  early  volumes,  1 894-1 895,  of  this  Review.^ 
I  have  no  specialist's  command  of  the  history  of  these  develop- 
ments, but  I  am  sure  that  the  history  of  Richard  Cabot's  justly 
famous  campaign  for  social  service  could  not  be  written  without 
reference  to  Royce's  work  on  the  social  consciousness.  And  I 
know  personally  that  hardly  a  day  passes  at  the  Psychopathic 

1  Merz,  J.  T.,  ^  History  of  European  Thought  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  Vol.  IV. 
Chap.  X,  "Of  Society,"  p.  437-     Blackwood,  Edinburgh.  1904. 

*  Royce,  J.,  "The  External  World  and  the  Social  Consciousness."  Philos. 
Review,  3,  1894;  and  "Self  Consciousness,  Social  Consciousness  and  Nature," 
ibid.,  4,  1895. 


426  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Hospital  in  Boston  without  concrete  exemplification  of  these 
interests  as  opposed  to  the  purely  medical.^ 

What  I  wish  here  to  set  forth  is  a  matter  of  special  psychiatric 
analysis  whose  scope  and  shape  have  been  transformed  by  in- 
fluences, not  so  much  of  a  sociological,  as  of  a  logical  nature, 
drawn  from  Royce's  seminary.  That  seminary  has  dealt  with 
a  great  variety  of  topics  from  a  comparative  point  of  view, 
although  the  statistical  sciences  have  not  been  neglected.  Such 
widely  contrasting  points  of  view  as  those  of  L.  J.  Henderson 
(revolving  about  the  considerations  of  his  book  on  The  Fitness 
of  the  Environment^)  and  those  of  F.  A.  Woods  (revolving  about 
the  considerations  of  his  books  on  The  Influence  of  Monarchs^ 
and  Is  War  Diminishing!*)  have  been  brought  by  their  authors 
in  the  developmental  state  to  the  seminary. 

The  topics  of  the  Seminary  over  a  long  period  of  years  have 
been  well-nigh  as  wide  in  range  as  those  of,  e.  g.,  Wundt's  Logik,^ 
but  their  choice  has  not  been  governed  by  any  principle  such  as 
that  of  Wundt's  Logik  or  by  any  evident  principle  except  that 
of  the  needs  of  a  variety  of  workers  who  have  for  a  variety  of 
reasons  been  attracted  to  the  Seminary.  Accordingly,  although 
the  principle  of  a  book  like  Wundt's  majestic  volumes  on  Logik 
is  probably  to  some  extent  aprioristic,  or  at  any  rate  governed 
by  still  more  general  metaphysical  principles  than  those  which 
the  book  itself  sets  forth,  the  topics  of  Professor  Royce's  Seminary 
have  subjected  themselves  to  no  special  principle;  and  this 
despite  the  fact  that  the  seminary  visitors  and  its  moderator 
have  often  been  tempted  into  metaphysical  digressions.  Aside 
from  the  personality  of  the  leader,  very  possibly  the  effects  of 
the  thought  of  the  late  Charles  S.  Peirce  and  the  late  Professor 

»  (Southard,  E.  E.,  editor),  Contributions  from  the  Psychopathic  Hospital  (Depart- 
ment of  the  Boston  State  Hospital),  Boston,  Mass.,  1913  and  1914. 

2  Henderson,  L.  J.,  The  Fitness  of  the  Environment,  an  Inquiry  into  the  Biological 
Significance  of  the  Properties  of  Matter,  Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

5  Woods,  F.  A.,  The  Influence  of  Monarchs,  Steps  in  a  New  Science  of  History, 
Macmillan,  N.  Y.,  1913. 

*  Woods,  F.  A.,  and  Baltzly,  A.,  Is  War  Diminishing?  A  Study  of  the  Prevalence 
of  War  in  Europe  from  1450  to  the  Present  Day,  Houghton,  Mifflin,  Boston,  1915. 

'  Wundt,  W.,  Logik,  Eine  Untersuchung  der  Principien  der  Erkenntnis  unter  der 
Methoden  wissenschafllicher  Forschung,  3  aufl.,  Stuttgart,  Enke,  1903. 


No.  3-]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         427 

William  James  have  been  most  in  evidence;  more  particularly, 
perhaps,  the  effects  of  Peirce's  thought. 

II. 

My  special  topic  may  be  described  as  a  grammar  of  delusions, 
or  more  exactly  as  an  application  of  a  portion  of  the  logical 
classifications  of  grammar  (and  more  especially  the  grammar  of 
verbs)  to  a  portion  of  the  data  of  psychiatry,  viz.,  delusions 
(and  more  especially  certain  delusions  that  I  call  pragmatic  or 
parapragmatic  to  distinguish  them  from  fantastic  or  more  purely 
ideational  delusions).  The  connotation  of  the  term  grammar 
is  therefore  not  that  of  the  elementary-and-therefore-simple-and- 
reHable,  which  the  term  receives  in,  say,  Newman's  Grammar  of 
Assent  or  Pearson's  Grammar  of  Science. 

My  reason  for  choosing  delusions  as  one  member  of  the  com- 
parative system  which  I  proposed  to  employ  as  illustrative  of  the 
method  of  Royce's  seminary  was  as  follows.  First,  there  was  no 
doubt  from  an  inspection  of  the  records  of  state  hospitals  for 
the  insane  that  delusions  or  false  beHefs  of  many  sorts  were 
among  the  most  frequent  of  psychopathic  phenomena.  Secondly, 
it  did  not  appear  that  the  topic  had  been  taken  up  seriously 
either  by  logic  or  by  psychology. 

First,  to  develop  a  little  farther  the  frequency  of  delusions 
amongst  the  insane,  I  may  refer  to  the  data  of  the  Danvers 
(Massachusetts)  State  Hospital  symptom  catalogue,  unique  I 
believe  in  its  representativeness  of  routine  records  of  com- 
paratively high  standard.^  Despite  the  fact  that  many  patients 
do  not  exhibit  definite  delusions  of  a  nature  permitting  accurate 
transcription,  yet  in  some  17,000  cases  of  all  sorts  of  mental 
disease  examined  at  the  Danvers  State  Hospital,  period  of 
1879  to  1913,^  there  were  certainly  no  less  than  5,000  cases  in 
which  the  delusions  were  definite  enough  to  permit  being  re- 
corded in  the  case  history.     No  doubt  this  experience  is  the  pre- 

1  Southard,  E.  E.,  The  Laboratory  Work  of  the  Danvers  State  Hospital,  Hathorne, 
Massachusetts.  With  especial  Relation  to  the  Policy  Formulated  by  Dr.  Charles 
Whitney  Page,  Superintendent,  1888-1898,  1903-1910. 

^  Southard,  E.  E.,  A  Study  of  Normal-looking  Brains  in  Psychopathic  Subjects, 
with  Notes  on  Symptomatology  (Danvers  State  Hospital  Material)  to  be  published. 


428  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW,  [Vol.  XXV. 

vailing  one,  and  no  doubt  more  intensive  histories  would  greatly 
augment  the  percentage  of  cases  characterized  at  one  time  or 
other  by  delusions. 

Such  figures  of  course  far  transcend  the  numbers  of  true 
'  paranoiacs '  (or  even  victims  of  paranoid  forms  of  the  dementia 
prsecox  of  Kraepelin),  and  I  should  not  wish  to  be  understood 
to  say  that,  in  the  5000  or  more  Danvers  cases,  delusions  formed 
the  head  and  center  of  the  mental  diseases  in  question. 

Yet  the  number  of  actual  entities  (in  the  medical  sense  of  this 
term  as  a  kind  of  collection  of  symptoms)  in  which  delusions  do 
form  a  central  feature  makes  a  formidable  list.  I  may  limit 
myself  to  the  following  actual  or  possible  entities:  paranoia, 
the  paranoid  form  of  dementia  prsecox,  and  the  somewhat  closely 
allied  paraphrenia  of  Kraepelin's  recent  formula,  the  so-called 
acute  alcoholic  hallucinosis,  or  insanity  of  alcoholic  origin,  a 
number  of  forms  of  pre-senile  psychoses,  some  forms  of  senile 
psychoses,  to  say  nothing  of  various  forms  of  syphilitic  mental 
disease,  as  also  manic  depressive  psychosis,  various  mild  or 
severe  psychopathic  conditions  not  ordinarily  considered  to 
amount  to  frank  mental  disease,  and  even  such  apparently 
remote  entities,  or  groups  of  entities,  as  are  found  under  the 
caption  of  epilepsy  and  feeblemindedness. 

So  much  will  suffice  to  show  the  frequency  of  delusions  among 
psychopaths  and  the  probable  magnitude  of  the  problem  for 
the  science  of  psychiatry.  I  need  not  here  discuss  the  some- 
what large  psychiatric  literature  of  delusions.  I  confess  that 
the  literature  in  question  has  struck  me  as  a  little  barren  or  at 
best  the  threshing  over  of  old  straw  by  the  application  of  cate- 
gories borrowed,  e.  g.,  from  Herbart  or  Wundt  to  material  that 
neither  had  ever  concretely  considered. 

Secondly,  to  develop  a  little  farther  the  logical  and  psycho- 
logical neglect  of  the  topic.  The  logic  of  fallacies,  e.  g.,  in  Alfred 
Sidgwick's  excellent  work,^  makes  not  the  slightest  draught  upon 
psychiatric  data,  not  merely  perhaps  because  the  delusions  of 

1  Sidgwick,  A.,  Fallacies,  a  View  of  Logic  from  the  Practical  Side,  The  Inter- 
national Scientific  Series,  Appleton,  N.  Y.,  1884.  Distinction  and  the  Criticism  of 
Beliefs,  Longmans,  Green,  London,  1892. 


No.  3.]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         429 

the  insane  are  not  prominently  fallacious  (at  least  some  of  the 
most  serious  and  important  of  insane  delusions)  but  because  a 
logician  would  never  spontaneously  think  of  going  to  psychiatry 
for  logical  material. 

But  also  and  more  markedly  perhaps,  it  would  be  somewhat 
easy  to  show  that  delusions,  especially  of  the  insane,  have  been 
too  largely  neglected  by  the  psychologists.  Even  James,  in 
whose  work  may  be  seen  remarkable  influences  of  his  psycho- 
pathological  point  of  view,  deals  with  delusions  of  the  insane  in  a 
very  few  brief  pages.^  For  example,  he  cites  insane  delusions 
along  with  alternating  selves  and  mediumships  as  a  type  of 
abnormal  alterations  in  the  self,  quoting  Ribot  upon  our  person- 
ality and  Griesinger  upon  the  'doubleness'  of  self,  of  the 
'struggle  of  the  old  self  against  new  discordant  forms  of  exper- 
ience,' 'the  opposition  of  the  conscious  me's,'  etc.  Again, 
James  quotes  from  Krishaber  a  case  of  the  well-known  meta- 
physical type  of  delusions  with  feelings  of  unreality.  In  a  foot- 
note to  his  chapter  on  the  perception  of  things,  James  quotes  a 
list  of  certain  special  delusions  given  by  Clouston,  suggesting 
that  in  many  cases  "there  are  certain  theories  which  the  patients 
invent  to  account  for  their  abnormal  bodily  sensations,"  "  that  in 
other  cases  they  are  due  to  hallucinations  of  hearing  and  sight." 
James  here  also  defines  a  delusion  "as  a  false  opinion  about  a 
matter  of  fact  which  need  not  necessarily  involve,  though  it 
often  does  involve,  false  perceptions  of  sensible  things." 

How  rationalistic,  nay  sensationalistic,  are  these  latter  de- 
finitions just  quoted  from  James!  The  point  is  urged  that  the 
data  of  reasoning  are  as  it  were  poisoned  at  the  sensory  source. 
Theories  are  invented,  or  hallucinations  supply  data. 

This,  as  it  seems  to  me,  over-rationalistic  account  of  delusions 
is  the  more  remarkable  in  James  because  the  whole  trend  of  his 
thinking  was  surely  bent  by  his  medical  or  psychopathological 
point  of  view.  Those  of  us  who  have  confidence  in  the  psycho- 
pathological  method  may  indeed  feel  that  the  key  to  a  thorough- 
going theory  of  belief  may  be  found  in  a  study  of  delusions; 
namely,  of  false  beliefs. 

1  James,  W.,  The  Principles  of  Psychology,  Henry  Holt,  N.  Y.,  1890,  Vol.  II, 
Chap.  XIX,  "The  Perception  of  'Things,'"  footnote,  p.  114. 


430  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

I  should  like  to  dwell  on  the  James  point  of  view  here,  because 
I  think  his  progress  subsequent  to  the  Principles  of  Psychology 
and  culminating  in  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience^  shows 
a  drawing-away  from  the  sensationalistic  point  of  view  to  a  very 
overt  voluntarism,  under  which,  had  James  considered  the  prob- 
lem of  delusions,  he  might  well  have  dealt  with  them  as  perver- 
sions of  will  rather  than  false  conceptions  or  conceptions  based 
on  false  perceptions,  hallucinations,  or  strange  bodily  sen- 
sations. 

It  is  difficult  not  to  think  that  the  logical  method  at  the  bottom 
of  James's  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience  is  not  essentially  the 
method  of  psychopathology  despite  the  careful  guarding  of  the 
point  of  view  from  certain  misconstructions  in  the  initial  chapter 
of  that  work,  entitled  "Religion  and  Neurology."  As  when 
James  states  concerning  the  phenomena  of  religious  experience 
that  "When  I  handle  them  biologically  and  psychologically  as  if 
they  were  mere  curious  facts  of  individual  history,  some  of  you 
may  think  it  a  degradation  to  so  sublime  a  subject  and  may  even 
suspect  me,  until  my  purpose  gets  more  fully  expressed,  of  de- 
liberately seeking  to  discredit  the  religious  side  of  Hfe."  James, 
it  will  be  remembered,  furnishes  a  concrete  example  in  George 
Fox,  pointing  out  that  whereas  the  Quaker  religion,  which  he 
founded,  is  something  which  it  is  impossible  to  overpraise,  yet 
Fox's  mind  was  unsound,  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  his 
nervous  constitution,  he  was  a  psychopath  or  "detraqu6  of  the 
deepest  dye." 

To  be  sure,,  we  do  not  need  to  guard  the  results  of  an  analysis 
of  insane  delusions  with  such  cautious  remarks  as  the  above 
concerning  the  psychopathic  varieties  of  religious  experience. 
Yet  I  am  inclined  co  believe  that  whether  or  no  the  point  of  view 
of  psychopathology  is  more  important  than  that  of  the  classical 
psychology  in  the  analysis  of  belief,  at  any  rate  the  possible 
contributions  of  psychopathology  have  been  singularly  neglected. 

Accordingly,  some  years  ago  I  started  some  superficial  and 

1  James,  W.,  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  A  Study  in  Human  Nature. 
Being  the  Gifford  Lectures  on  Natural  Religion  delivered  at  Edinburgh  in  1901- 
1902.     Longmans,  Green,  London,  1902. 


No.  3-]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         431 

orienting  analyses  of  delusional  material/  the  results  of  which  I 
wish  to  present  briefly  here,  partly  to  show  the  general  nature  of 
the  material. 

My  first  systematic  work  dealt  with  somatic  delusions^  and 
the  result  was  decidedly  sensationalistic  and  quite  aptly  illus- 
trated James's  remark  above  quoted  concerning  "theories  which 
the  patients  invent  to  account  for  their  abnormal  bodily  sensa- 
tions." In  fact  it  was  only  when  one  passed  from  somatic  to 
personal  and  environmental  delusions  that  what  I  have  called  the 
sensationalistic  hypotheses  seemed  to  fail. 

To  quote  a  portion  of  the  conclusions  drawn  from  the  work  on 
somatic  delusions,  "the  concept  of  the  crystallization  of  delusions 
around  sensorial  data  of  an  abnormal  sort  must  be  entertained  for 
some  delusions  at  least."  More  in  detail,  "In  one  group  of 
cases  (Cases  I,  II,  III,  possibly  VIII)  the  psychic  rendering  of 
the  somatic  states  is  rather  critical  and  temporary,  and  follows  a 
process  somewhat  comprehensible  to  the  normal  mind.  (Type: 
*'  shot  by  a  fellow  with  a  seven-shooter,"  in  a  spot  found  to  correspond 
with  a  patch  of  dry  pleurisy.)" 

"In  others  (Cases  IV,  V)  the  psychic  rendering  is  less  natural 
and  is  more  a  genuine  transformation  of  the  sensorial  data  into 
ideas  quite  new.  (Type:  ^^bees  in  the  skull"  found  in  the  case 
with  cranial  osteomalacia.)" 

"In  others  (Cases  VI,  VII)  the  problem  is  raised  whether 
severe  hypochondria,  with  ideas  concerning  dead  entrails  and 
the  like,  may  not  often  indicate  such  severe  somatic  disease 
as  tuberculosis.  The  psychic  rendering  here  is  of  a  more  general 
(apperceptive?)  sort." 

A  somewhat  generalized  account  of  this  conception  was  pre- 
sented in  more  popular  form  by  my  friend  Dr.  Franz  in  the 
Popular  Science  Monthly.^ 

1  Southard,  E.  E.,  and  Mitchell,  H.  W.,  "Melancholia  with  Delusions  of  Nega- 
tion: Three  Cases  with  Autopsy,"  Jour.  Nervous  and  Mental  Disease,  1908,  Vol.  35. 

Southard,  E.  E.,  and  Fitzgerald,  J.  G.,  "Discussion  of  Psychic  and  Somatic 
Factors  in  a  Case  of  Acute  Delirium  Dying  of  Septicemia,"  Boston  Medical  &" 
Surgical  Journal,  1910,  Vol.  162. 

2  Southard,  E.  E.,  "On  the  Somatic  Sources  of  Somatic  Delusions."  Jour. 
Abnormal  Psychology,  December,  1912-Jan.,  1913. 

^ Franz,  S.  I.,  "Delusions,"  Popular  Science  Monthly,  January,  1915. 


432  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

A  second  paper  on  environmental  (or,  as  I  called  them,  follow- 
ing Wernicke,  allopsychic)  delusions^  yielded  the  in  one  sense 
negative  result  that  enrivonmental  delusions  seemed  to  trace  back 
in  most  instances  to  temporally  or  logically  prior  disorder  of 
personality.  I  raised  then  the  question  whether  delusions  often 
spread  inwards  (egocentripetally)  or  habitually  outwards  (ego- 
centrifugally),  a  concept  later  to  be  illuminated  by  the  concept 
of  the  voice  (active,  passive,  or  reflexive)  in  which  the  patients 
habitually  or  characteristically  moved. 

I  found  that,  to  quote  a  later  paper  on  delusions  of  personality,^ 
"put  briefly,  the  deluded  patient  is  more  apt  to  divine  correctly 
the  diseases  of  his  body  than  his  devilments  by  society."  Or 
more  in  detail  "these  delusions  having  a  social  content  pointed 
far  more  often  inwards  at  the  personality  of  the  patient  than 
outwards  at  the  conditions  of  the  world.  And  case  after  case, 
having  apparently  an  almost  pure  display  of  environmental 
delusions,  turned  out  to  possess  most  obvious  defects  of  intellect 
or  of  temperament  which  would  forbid  their  owners  to  react 
properly  to  the  most  favorable  of  environments.  Hence,  we 
believe,  it  may  be  generally  stated  that  the  clinician  is  far  less 
likely  to  get  valuable  points  as  to  the  social  exteriors  of  his 
patients  from  the  contents  of  their  social  delusions  than  he  proved 
to  be  able  to  get  when  reasoning  from  somatic  delusions  to 
somatic  interiors." 

A  word  is  perhaps  necessary  to  guard  against  too  sweeping 
conclusions.  "In  a  few  cases  it  seemed  that  something  like  a 
close  correlation  did  exist  between  such  allopsychic  delusions 
and  the  conditions  which  had  surrounded  the  patient — the  delu- 
sory fears  of  insane  merchants  ran  on  commercial  ruin,  and  certain 
women  dealt  in  their  delusions  largely  with  domestic  debdcles. 
But,  on  the  whole,  we  could  not  say  that,  as  the  somatic  delusions 
seemed  to  grow  out  of  and  somewhat  fairly  represent  the  condi- 
tions of  the  soma,  so  the  environmental  delusions  would  appear 
to  grow  out  of  or  fairly  represent  the  environment." 

»  Southard,  E.  E.,  and  Stearns,  H.  W.,  "  How  Far  is  the  Environment  Responsible 
for  Delusions?"     Jour.  Abnormal  Psychology,  June-July,  1913- 

« Southard,  E.  E.,  "Data  Concerning  Delusions  of  Personality.  With  Note  on 
the  Association  of  Bright's  Disease  and  Unpleasant  Delusions."  Journ.  Abnormal 
Psychology,  Oct.-Nov.,  191 5. 


No.  3.]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         433 

I  need  quote  from  only  one  more  paper  on  the  delusion  ques- 
tion. The  papers  above  mentioned  deal  chiefly  with  cases  whose 
brains  looked  normal  to  the  naked  eye,  the  material  having 
been  chosen  as  nearest  to  normal.  In  another  study  I  deliber- 
ately took  up  perhaps  the  most  abnormal  material  that  we 
possess  in  psychiatry,  namely,  subjects  of  general  paresis,^  a 
disease  now  regarded  as  a  form  of  brain  syphilis.  Incidentally 
I  found  that  the  somatic  delusions,  despite  the  grave  brain  damage 
of  paresis,  tended  to  show  somatic  sources,  precisely  as  had  the 
normal-brain  material.  When  it  came  to  allopsychic  (environ- 
mental) and  autopsychic  (personal)  delusions,  it  appeared  that 
these  delusions  were  statistically  associated  with  lesions  of  the 
frontal  lobes,  and  that  cases  without  frontal  emphasis  of  lesions 
were  not  at  all  apt  to  be  delusional  or,  for  that  matter,  to  be 
specially  subject  to  grave  disorder  of  personality. 

Now  it  might  not  be  at  once  obvious  to  those  who  have  not 
followed  the  progress  of  brain  physiology  whither  these  frontal 
lobe  findings  would  speculatively  lead.  I  shall  develop  the 
matter  merely  to  the  point  of  justifying  the  choice  of  the  grammar 
of  verbs  rather  than  that  of  nouns  for  comparative  purposes  (I 
bear  in  mind  that  I  have  not  yet  justified  the  choice  of  grammar 
at  all  for  such  purposes). 

There  has  been,  ever  since  the  discovery  attributed  to  Charles 
Bell  of  the  different  functions  of  the  posterior  and  anterior  spinal 
nerve  roots,  a  growing  mass  of  data  concerning  the  posterior 
situation  of  the  sensory  arrival-platforms  (a  term  of  F.  W.  Mott) 
and  the  anterior  situation  of  the  motor  departure-platforms. 
The  evolutionary  complications  of  the  bulb  and  indeed  of  the 
whole  rhombencephalon  and  of  the  isthmus  cerebri  did  not  suc- 
ceed in  abolishing  this  general  tendency  to  the  posterior  situation 
of  the  sensory  arrangements,  despite  their  sidewise  pushing  in 
certain  regions. 

The  posterior-lying  cerebellum  is  regarded  as  a  sensory  organ 
despite  its  indirect  chief  function  of  modifying  muscular  activity 

1  Southard,  E.  E.,  and  Tepper,  A.  S.,  "The  Possible  Correlation  between  Delu- 
sions and  Cortex  Lesions  in  General  Paresis,"  Jour.  Abnormal  Psychology,  Oct.- 
Nov.,  1913. 


434  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

in  certain  ways.  Then  the  physiologists  found  a  variety  of 
sensory  spheres  more  posteriorly  lying  in  the  cerebrum.  Sher- 
rington found  that  the  fissure  of  Rolando  had  tissue  behind  it 
that  must  be  regarded  as  receptive  in  nature  and  tissue  forward 
of  it  that  must  be  regarded  as  motor.  Moreover,  different  parts 
of  the  precentrial  gyrus  serving  face,  arm,  and  leg  were  found  to  lie 
immediately  adjacent  to  receptive  tissues  for  the  self-same  struc- 
tures lying  back  of  the  Rolandic  fissure  in  the  postcentral  gyrus. 

Accordingly  it  appeared  that  the  nerve  tissues  exhibit  a  some- 
what general  law  to  the  effect  that  the  function  of  impression  is 
likely  to  employ  posterior-lying  tissues,  whereas,  anterior-lying 
tissues  are  likely  to  be  related  with  the  function  of  expression, 
and  this  law  is  likely  to  find  expression  not  alone  in  the  simple 
spinal  cord  but  also  in  the  complicated  cerebral  cortex. 

If  it  were  permissible  to  draw  psychological  conclusions  from 
this  law  as  applied  to  the  cerebral  cortex,  it  might  be  plausibly 
mentioned  that  consciousness,  in  so  far  as  it  is  cognitive,  whether 
those  cognitions  are  visual,  auditory,  or  kinaesthetic,  is  rather  more 
likely  to  employ  posterior-lying  tissues  than  anterior-lying  ones 
in  the  cortex.  CampbelP  indeed  gave  utterance  to  the  suspicion 
that  consciousness  is  a  function  of  the  posterior  association 
center  of  Flechsig.     I  am  personally  inclined  to  this  view. 

It  is  clear  then  that  to  find  delusions  related  to  frontal  lobe 
disorder,  i.  e.,  to  disorder  of  forward-lying  tissues  was  at  first 
surprising.  Delusions  or  false  beliefs  have  the  ring  of  con- 
sciousness, of  cognition,  of  ideas.  The  falsity  of  these  ideas  is 
somehow  taken  as  residing  in  the  ideas;  at  least  that  is  the 
tendency  of  the  analyst.  Hence,  if  one  were  seeking  cortical 
correlations  for  false  beliefs  taken  as  ideas  essentially  and  in- 
trinsically false,  one  would  be  apt  to  turn  forthwith,  not  to  the 
frontal  lobes,  but  say  to  the  parietal  lobes. 

Surprises  in  the  nature  of  results  diametrically  opposed  to 
expectation  are  somewhat  frequent  in  neurology  as  elsewhere. 
I  had  been  astonished  to  find,  in  the  obscure  quasi-functional  but 
probably  in  some  sense  'organic'  disease  dementia  praecox,  that 

'  Campbell,  A.  W.,  Histological  Studies  on  the  Localization  of  Cerebral  Function, 
Univ.  Press,  Cambridge,  Eng.,  1905,  esp.  p.  206. 


No.  3.]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         435 

the  symptom  katatonia,  a  highly  motor-looking  symptom, tended 
to  associate  itself  with  posterior-lying  tissues.^  In  the  same  dis- 
ease, delusions  tended  to  relate  themselves  with  frontal  lobe 
lesions.  Not  only  were  delusions  found  to  be  based  as  a  rule  on 
frontal  disease  and  katatonic  symptoms  on  parietal  lobe  disease, 
but  an  equally  strong  correlation  was  found  between  auditory 
hallucinations  and  disease  of  the  temporal  lobe.  Of  course  the 
correlation  between  auditory  hallucinations  and  lesions  of  the 
temporal  lobes  might  be  d,  priori  expected,  but  the  writer  at 
least  did  not  suspect  beforehand  the  possibility  of  any  relation 
between  katatonia  (a  condition  in  which  hypertensive  states  of 
the  muscles  occur,  sometimes  amounting  to  actual  flexihilitas 
cerea  and  catalepsy)  and  disease  of  the  parietal  region.  In 
point  of  fact,  the  strikingly  cataleptic  cases  of  my  series  seemed 
to  be  often  associated  with  gross  lesions  of  the  post-central  gyrus, 
thus  giving  rise  to  a  suspicion  that  the  condition  katatonia  or 
catalepsy  is  actually  due  to  a  disorder  of  kinaesthesia,  or  at  all 
events  of  the  tissues  which  are  in  some  sense  the  seat  of  kinaes- 
thesia. This,  then,  is  an  example  of  one  of  the  perennial  surprises 
of  observation.  An  apparent  disorder  of  motion  seems  to  resolve 
itself  into  an  actual  disorder  on  the  afferent  side. 

Equally  surprising  in  an  opposite  direction  was  the  correlation 
of  delusion  formation  with  disease  of  the  frontal  lobes.  As  else- 
where stated  in  this  paper,  a  rationalistic  or  sensationalistic 
account  of  delusions  would  naturally  lead  us  to  think  of  brain 
disorder  in  the  sensorium.  In  point  of  fact,  the  parts  of  the 
brain  which  are  best  entitled  to  the  name  sensorium  seem  to  be 
free  of  gross  lesions  and  anomaly  except  in  a  comparatively  small 
hyperphantasia  group.  To  quote  from  conclusions  of  a  paper  on 
Dementia  Praecox,  "The  non-frontal  group  of  delusion-formations 
the  writer  wishes  to  group  provisionally  under  the  term  hyper- 
phantasia, emphasizing  the  overimagination  or  perverted  imagi- 
nation of  these  cases,   the  frequent  lack  of  any  appropriate 

1  Southard,  E.  E.,  "A  Study  of  the  Dementia  Praecox  Group  in  the  Light  of 
Certain  Cases  Showing  Anomalies  or  Scleroses  in  Particular  Brain-Regions." 
On  the  Topographical  Distribution  of  Cortex  Lesions  and  Anomalies  in  Dementia 
Praecox,  with  some  account  of  their  Functional  Significance,  Am.  Jour.  Insanity, 
Vol.  LXXL  Nos.  2  and  3- 


436  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

conduct-disorder  in  the  patients  harboring  such  delusions,  and 
the  d,  priori  UkeHhood  that  these  cases  should  turn  out  to  have 
posterior-association-center  disease  rather  than  disease  of  the 
anterior  association-center.  This  anatomical  correlation  is  in 
fact  the  one  observed." 

To  sum  up  the  argument  to  this  point,  delusions  of  the  insane 
have  been  chosen  for  comparative  study  because  of  their  fre- 
quency as  symptoms  and  their  centrality  in  many  important 
mental  diseases.  'Furthermore,  because  of  their  neglect  by 
logic  and  by  psychology.  There  is,  however,  a  likelihood  that 
psychopathological  methods  will  aid  both  logic  and  psychology. 
Somatic  delusions  do,  it  is  true,  afford  some  basis  for  a  sensational- 
istic  theory  of  delusions  and  indirectly  of  belief  in  general.  But 
delusions  affecting  personality  are  perhaps  better  regarded  as 
will-disorders  or  disorders  of  expression.  At  any  rate,  the 
writer's  views  were  governed  by  his  anatomical  results  in  general 
paresis  and  in  dementia  praecox,  which  seemed  to  show  that  the 
majority  of  delusions  were  related  to  frontal  lobe  disorder. 
On  general  grounds  the  frontal  lobes  seem  to  the  writer  to  be 
best  regarded  as  organs  for  the  elaboration  of  motion  (including 
attitude,  conduct,  and  the  like).  Of  course  the  existence  of 
essentially  ideational  delusions,  here  called  fantastic,  must  be 
conceded :  these  beliefs  are  as  it  were  prima  facie  delusions  and 
do  not  require  individual  and  specific  testing  in  experience  to 
determine  their  falsity.  Such  delusions  were  found  in  one  disease 
(dementia  praecox)  related  with  parietal  lobe  anomalies  or  other 
lesions.  However,  the  accuracy  of  the  anatomical  observations 
and  their  future  confirmation  are  not  essential  to  the  argument. 
Nor  is  it  necessary  to  consider  the  parietal  lobes  as  an  expanded 
and  elaborated  sensorium  and  the  frontal  lobes  as  an  expanded 
and  elaborated  motorium  in  following  these  contentions.  In 
point  of  fact,  the  pragmatic  element  in  many  or  in  all  delusions  is 
perhaps  obvious  to  inspection,  and  the  existence  of  a  fantastic 
group  of  delusions,  not  requiring  much  pragmatic  testing,  is  not 
unlikely  on  general  grounds. 

Assuming,  then,  for  the  moment  that  the  value  of  comparing 
the  categories  of  grammar  with  those  of  psychiatry  is  conceded 


No.  3-]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         437 

and  that  delusions  have  been  chosen  for  a  test  of  such  compari- 
sons, it  becomes  obvious  that  the  strong  motor,  expressive,  prag- 
matic element  in  delusions  immediately  invites  comparison  with 
the  categories  of  the  verbs. 

III. 

I  am  so  ignorant  of  the  theory  of  grammar  that  the  present 
section  of  my  paper  must  be  very  brief.  At  the  outset  I  must 
perhaps  say  that  the  value  of  comparing  categories  of  two  sets 
of  scientific  data  would  be  much  diminished  if  those  data  hap- 
pened to  have  been  analyzed  by  the  same  group  of  men  or  under 
the  same  dominant  logical  interest.  Had  the  theory  of  speech- 
function,  language,  grammar,  and  cognate  materials  been  elabor- 
ated by  the  same  technique  as  the  materials  of  psychiatry,  then 
the  chances  are  that  the  comparisons  here  intended  would  be  of 
lesser  value.  Luckily  for  these  purposes,  unfortunately  perhaps 
for  others,  it  would  appear  that  the  psychology  which  dominates 
philology  and  comparative  grammar  is  not  especially  modern, 
and  is  indeed  Herbartian.  On  the  other  hand,  the  development 
of  aphasia  doctrines  and  cognate  matters  in  psychiatry  has  not 
considered  to  any  extent  the  developments  of  philology,  com- 
parative grammar,  or  even  the  anthropology  that  has  grown  hand 
and  hand  with  linguistics. 

The  ideas  of  Delbriick^  about  grammar  and  the  ideas  of  Wundt 
about  speech  have  undergone  insulated  courses.  Steinthal  and 
Paul  seem  to  have  been  Herbartians,  and  Delbriick  seems  to  have 
followed  them.  After  Wundt's  publication  of  large  volumes  on 
Sprache,^  Delbruck  brought  out  a  little  book  of  critique,^  regard- 
ing many  of  the  Wundtian  contentions  about  speech  as  un- 
warrantable applications  of  personal  and  unproved  psychology. 
Wundt  repHed  in  another  small  book.*  There  was  no  sign  of 
unanimity. 

1  Brugmann  and  Delbruck,  Vergleichende  Grammatik  der  Indogermanischer 
Sprachen,  1886-1900. 

2  Wundt,  W.,  Volkerpsychologie,  Eine  Untersuckung  der  Entwicklungsgeschickte 
von  Sprache,  My  thus  und  Sitte,  I  Bd.,  Die  Sprache,  1900;  H.  2,  2  Aufl.,  1904. 

3  Delbruck,  Grundfragen  der  Sprachforschung,  mit  Riicksicht  auf  W.  Wundt's 
Sprachpsychologie  Erortert,  Strassburg,  1901. 

<  Wundt,  W.,  Sprachgeschichte  und  Sprachpsychologie  mit  Riicksicht  auf  B. 
Delbriick' s  Grundfragen  der  Sprachforschung,  Leipzig,  1901. 


438  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

For  our  purposes  this  situation  is  on  the  whole  advantageous, 
since  we  can  trust  the  categorization  of  grammar  to  have  pro- 
ceeded without  immediate  and  constant  overhauling  in  the 
progress  of  psychology.  Humboldt,  Jones,  Bopp,  Grimm,  Pott, 
Binfry,  Schleicher,  Brugmann,  Whitney,  and  Delbriick  himself 
are  names  of  men  hardly  touched  by  psychology  or  logic.  In 
fact  the  Junggrammatiker  with  their  suspicion  of  metaphors  in 
the  whole  range  of  their  science  would  probably  look  on  an 
incursion  of  psychology  into  philology  as  a  genuine  raid.  They 
would  probably  recall  with  heart-sinking  older  efforts  at  a 
universal  grammar,  at  a  'metaphysics  of  language'!  There 
might  indeed  be  a  suspicion  that  somehow  the  psychological 
raiders  were  going  insidiously  to  introduce  still  more  deadly 
poisons  into  the  already  defiled  wells  of  grammar  than  the 
'bow-wow'  or  'pooh-pooh'  theories. 

The  present  plan  is  more  modest.  Probably  the  streams  of 
logic  now  current  in  linguistics  and  psychology  parted  as  long 
ago  as  Kant.  The  categories  of  neither  science  have  had  much 
effect  upon  the  other.  Occasional  references  are  made  by  ex- 
pounders of  the  one  science  to  the  injurious  effects  of  a  possible 
resort  to  the  other.  Probably  a  'nerve-brain'  theory  of  lin- 
guistics would  be  regarded  by  philologists  as  hardly  a  degree 
removed  from  dangerous  metaphors  derived  from  'natural' 
sciences,  of  which  examples  are  cited  especially  against  Schleicher. 
Giles  says,^  e.  g.:  "Schleicher  and  his  followers  in  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century  had  taken  a  keen  interest  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  natural  sciences,  and  had  to  some  extent  assimilated 
their  terminology  to  that  employed  in  those  sciences.  It  was, 
however,  soon  recognized  that  the  laws  of  language  and  those  of 
natural  science  were  not  really  alike  or  akin."  Thus,  by  appeal 
to  higher  authority,  are  guarded  the  preserves  of  special  theory. 

However,  on  the  other  hand,  in  discussing  these  considerations 
with  psychologists  and  philosophers,  I  find  signs  of  an  opposite 
tendency.  A  friendly  critic  remarked  that  he  had  always  sup- 
posed that  psychiatry  and  psychology  could  derive  much  aid  from 
linguistics,  in  view  of  the  obvious  fact  that  thought  and  language 

'  Giles,  p.,  "Philology,"  Encyc.  Brit.,  eleventh  ed.,  Vol.  21,  p.  431. 


No.  3-]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         439 

are  so  largely  identical  in  mechanism.  This  contention  was  that 
in  studying  linguistics  one  is  studying  a  branch  of  psychology 
and  that  in  studying  psychology  one  is  nowhere  or  almost  no- 
where free  from  speech  analogues.  And,  in  the  same  direction, 
one  is  aware  how  much  of  the  development  of  brain -localization 
theory  in  psychiatry  is  built  up  on  analogies  to  the  conditions 
prevailing  in  aphasia.  The  psychiatrist  would  here  recall  the 
efforts  of  the  Wernicke  school/  beginning  with  sensory  aphasia 
and  culminating  in  apraxia. 

As  against  such  contentions  I  find  numerous  objections  to  the 
employment  of  linguistic  theory  in  the  elaboration  of  logical 
and  psychological  doctrine.  The  logicians  in  especial  seem  ag- 
grieved at  the  perverted  usage  of  sentence-structure  in  syllo- 
gistic theory  and  are  constantly  calling  attention  to  the  pitfalls, 
of  language  in  respect  to  logic.  Charles  Peirce  remarks^  how  much 
the  logician  Sigwart  seems  to  depend  on  the  expression  of  im- 
mediate feeling  as  logical,  and  how  Sigwart  considers  language 
and  especially  the  German  language  as  the  best  vehicle  of  logic. 
It  will  be  recalled  how  much  attention  is  paid  to  'substantive' 
and  'adjective'  ideas  in  some  of  James's  chapters.  The  reaction 
of  most  readers  to  the  idea  of  'but'  or  of  'if  runs,  I  suppose, 
to  the  effect  that  something  figurative  probably  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  the  linguistic  analogy.^ 

We  are  often  warned  both  by  grammarians^  and  by  psycho- 
logists not  to  trust  overmuch  to  the  situation  depicted  in  Indo- 
European  comparative  grammar,  e.  g.,  in  the  work  of  Berthold, 
Brugmann,  and  Delbriick.  Thus  the  principles  of  the  isolating 
Chinese,  the  agglutinating  Turkish,  the  polysynthetic  North 
American  Indian  languages  are  said  to  be  impossible  of  estab- 
lishment by  means  of  terms  borrowed  from  the  Indo-European 
grammar. 

1  Wernicke,  C,  Grundriss  der  Psychiatric  in  klinischen  Vorlesungen.  Thieme, 
Leipz.,  1900,  2.  Auflage,  1906,  "  Psycho-Physiologische  Einleitung,"  S.  1-78. 

«  Peirce,  C.  S.,  "Modality,"  Baldwin's  Diet.  Philos.  and  Psychol.  Macmillan, 
N.  Y.,  1902,  Vol.  2,  p.  92. 

'  James,  W.,  The  Principles  of  Psychology,  Chap.  IX,  "The  Stream  of  Thought," 
esp.  pp.  243-8. 

*  Wheeler,  B.  I.,  "Language,"  Baldwin's  Diet.  Philos.  and  Psychol.  Macmillan, 
N.  Y.,  1902,  Vol.  I,  p.  618,  esp.  621. 


440  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Upon  a  superficial  inspection  of  grammar  we  chose  to  believe 
that  something  of  value  to  the  theory  of  delusions,  at  all  events 
to  their  nomenclature,  could  be  obtained  by  a  study  of  the 
theory  of  verbs  in  grammar.  If  the  polysynthetic  languages 
have  no  verbs,  it  is  nevertheless  undeniable  that  action  is  ex- 
pressed by  North  American  Indians.  If  incorporated  languages 
often  insert  the  object  in  the  verb,  yet  at  any  rate  the  Basques 
are  able  to  express  action.  If  the  Semitic  verb  has  no  tenses 
and  merely  expresses  relations,  yet  at  any  rate  there  is  a  concept 
tense,  which  concept  could  be  expressed  by  Semitic  speakers. 
These  examples  suffice  to  hint  at  the  great  extent  of  the  field  of 
comparison. 

I  choose  to  study  the  grammar  of  verbs  for  the  purpose  of 
getting  light  on  delusions  or  beliefs  involving  action.  Much 
will  be  to  the  purpose,  much  not.  In  any  event  the  grammatical 
nomenclature  will  not  have  been  built  up  by  psychologists  or 
psychiatrists.  We  shall  not  identify  grammar  and  psychology: 
we  shall  merely  hunt  for  identities  and  analogies. 

There  is  some  indication  that  in  Indo-European  grammar  there 
are  four  fundamental  moods,  imperative,  indicative,  subjunctive, 
optative.  A  discussion  like  that  in  Goodwin's  Greek  Moods 
and  Tenses^  exhibits  some  of  the  ingenious  and  appealing  problems 
of  these  moods.  Probably  the  germ  of  my  desire  to  approach  the 
present  considerations  was  got  from  casual  reading  of  the  dis- 
cussion by  Goodwin  of  Delbriick's  contentions  concerning  the 
subjunctive  as  a  mood  of  will  and  the  optative  as  a  mood  of 
wish. 

The  simplest  verb  forms  seem  to  be  the  imperatives,  bare 
stems  as  a  rule.  How  readily  these  could  be  derived  from  cries, 
simple  vowel  calling,  or  at  any  rate  simple  articulations,  early 
in  man's  development,  can  be  readily  imagined.  The  early 
world  of  the  savage  and  the  babe  gets  on  to  a  considerable  range 
of  power  with  imperatives  and  the  kindred  vocatives. 

Indicatives  may  then  develop  or,  if  not  temporally  prior  to 

•  Goodwin,  W.  W.,  Syntax  of  the  Moods  and  Tenses  of  the  Greek  Verb.  Revised 
and  enlarged.  Ginn,  Boston,  1890.  Especially  Appendix,  "The  Relation  of  the 
Optative  to  the  Subjunctive  and  other  Moods,"  p.  371-389,  with  specific  references 
to  DelbrUck. 


No.  3.]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         44I 

the  subjunctives  and  optatives  in  verb-form  development  (and 
I  suppose  there  are  not  enough  comparative  data  from  different 
linguistic  groups  to  permit  a  general  answer  to  such  questions), 
then  in  any  event  logically  prior.  The  world  of  language  is  full 
of  statements,  true  or  false,  affirmative  or  interrogatory. 

Figuratively  presented,  the  linguistic  verb  stratum  of  impera- 
tives is  spread  over  with  a  layer  of  indicatives,  which  the  in- 
creasing tranquility  of  life  permits  and  produces.  Imperatives 
and  vocatives  are  less  necessary,  less  polite,  less  useful,  since 
past  and  future  facts  can  now  be  held  and  turned  over  in  the 
mind. 

Gradually  there  may  develop  at  the  two  poles  of  the  language 
structure  the  moods  of  will  and  wish,  to  use  Delbruck's  terms. 
The  development  might  of  course  be  that,  as  a  result  of  the 
operation  of  the  fancy,  the  layer  of  the  indicatives  should  be 
overlaid  by  a  stratum  of  optatives,  to  which  a  number  of  false 
indicative  statements  might  have  made  a  convenient  transition. 
Then  further  the  layer  of  wishes  might  be  topped  with  the  layer 
of  subjunctives,  i.  e.,  of  hypotheses,  conditions,  probabiHties,  and 
the  like. 

As  we  see  men  and  women,  however,  I  am  inclined,  for  the 
present  at  least,  to  hold  to  the  notion  that  the  subjunctive  and 
optative  developments  (of  course  always  as  mental  reactions,  not 
as  verb-forms  necessarily)  take  place  rather  independently.  To 
be  sure,  the  absolute  deliverances  of  the  Utinam!  Would  that! 
optative  type  do  surely  resemble  imperatives  rather  than  indi- 
catives. And  the  more  complicated  machinery  of  a  sentence 
containing  a  subjunctive  immediately  suggests  the  regularity 
and  finish  of  the  indicative.  Both  the  subjunctive  and  the 
optative,  however,  have  a  derivative  appearance  and  suggest  the 
necessity  of  indicatives  as  at  any  rate  logically  prior  to  their 
formation.  Hence,  as  above  stated,  I  prefer  to  see  the  optatives 
and  subjunctives  rising  as  it  were  as  separate  eminences  from 
the  plateau  of  indicatives,  and  this  despite  the  fact  that  special 
pipes  may  lead  from  the  underlying  imperatives  to  the  moods 
of  wish. 

Perhaps  I  should  here  insist  that  the  point  of  such  a  metaphor- 


442  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

ical  account  of  a  certain  aspect  of  verb-forms  is  not  at  all  to 
offend  any  modern  representatives  of  the  Junggrammatiker. 
Above  all,  such  an  account  has  nothing  historical  or  glottogonic 
about  it.     The  point,  if  well  taken,  is  logical  not  historical. 

The  student  of  human  character  and  especially  the  alienist  is 
at  once  aware  that  this  fourfold  division  of  moods  (imperative, 
indicative,  subjunctive,  optative)  fairly  well  corresponds  with 
human  character  groups.  Especially  is  this  true  of  the  sub- 
junctive-optative contrast. 

Who  cannot  see  the  scientific  man  as  a  man  of  hypotheses  and 
probabilities,  viz.  of  subjunctives,  and  the  artistic  man  as  a  man 
of  wishes  and  fancies,  viz.,  of  optatives.  'If  me  no  ifs,'  im- 
patiently cries  the  poet  to  the  man  of  science.  'The  wish  is 
father  to  the  thought,'  sadly  or  crabbedly  the  scientific  man 
replies. 

Such  reflections  as  these,  rather  than  genetic  linguistic  con- 
siderations, suggested  the  comparisons  of  the  present  paper. 

More  or  less  instructive  comparisons  between  these  funda- 
mental moods  and  the  classical  temperaments  might  be  made: 
thus,  choleric,  imperative;  phlegmatic,  indicative;  melancholic, 
subjunctive;  sanguine,  optative.  Probably  the  choleric  and 
sanguine  temperaments  suit  the  imperative  and  optative 
moods  more  perfectly  than  do  the  others.  There  remains,  how- 
ever, something  apposite  in  them  all.  It  would  not  be  difficult 
to  show  similar  analogies  between  these  four  moods  and  the 
character  types  of  Malapert,  for  example. 

To  sum  up,  at  this  point,  after  stating  in  Section  I  the  raison 
d'etre  of  these  comparisons,  the  general  reasons  for  choosing 
delusions  as  the  comparand  were  stated  in  Section  II,  at  the  end 
of  which  section  it  was  stated  that  the  grammatical  comparator 
must  be  from  the  region  of  the  verbs.  Section  II  had  called 
attention  to  the  pragmatic  element  in  the  majority  of  delusions, 
throwing  this  element  into  contrast  with  the  ideational  one. 
Some  special  reasons  from  brain  physiology  and  from  the  writer's 
anatomical  studies  were  adduced  in  explanation  of  the  pragmatic 
element  in  delusions.  These  physiological  and  anatomical  no- 
tions were  not  essential  to  the  logical  argument.     But  the  fact 


No.  3-]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         443 

that  somatic  delusions  seemed  to  crystallize  about  sensorial 
data  (and  were  consequently  rather  more  of  the  nature  of  illu- 
sions) and  the  fact  that  there  seems  also  to  be  a  second  group 
of  fantastic  delusions  (also  more  of  a  sensory  nature  and  as  it 
were  illusions  of  memory  and  overplay  of  imagination)  are  two 
facts  that  tend,  by  the  relative  infrequency  of  their  appearance, 
to  emphasize  the  fundamental  importance  of  the  pragmatic 
element  in  most  delusions.  Most  delusions  are  not  prima  facie 
false  beliefs,  but  require  the  test  of  time  and  experience  to  prove 
their  nature.  This  is  but  another  way  of  stating  their  pragmatic, 
or  at  any  rate  their  motor  and  expressive,  character. 

In  Section  III,  a  brief  sketch  has  been  offered  of  the  situation 
in  grammatical  science,  which  seems  to  have  developed  along  a 
path  separate  from  that  of  the  mental  sciences,  such  as  logic, 
psychology,  psychiatry.  The  categories,  nomenclature,  and 
classification  of  grammar  have  therefore  a  certain  independence 
from  those  of  the  mental  sciences.  Delbriick  and  Wundt  do  not 
gibe  exactly.  The  section  is  finished  by  a  brief  statement  as  to 
the  four  moods  (imperative,  indictive,  subjunctive,  optative), 
which  Indo-European  grammar  has  shown  to  be  fundamental. 
A  figure  of  speech  recalling  the  strata  of  geology  is  offered  wherein 
the  earliest  practical  situation  in  the  development  language  is 
depicted  as  a  layer  of  imperatives,  next  a  layer  of  indicatives, 
and  thereupon  the  subjunctives  and  optatives.  Possibly  these 
latter  have  a  certain  independence  of  development  and  spring 
from  different  parts  of  the  plateau.  The  optative  or  mood  of 
wish  may  possibly  derive  more  particularly  from  the  imperatives- 

The  next  section  will  take  up  in  order  the  most  striking  features 
in  the  categorization  of  the  verbs  which  seem  to  be  applicable  to 
delusions. 

IV. 

Dismissing  discussion  as  to  choice  of  delusions  as  an  object 
of  comparison,  and  assuming  that  the  pragmatic  element  in 
delusions  is  strong  enough  to  suggest  comparison  with  the  most 
active  and  motor  categories  of  grammar,  I  had  proceeded  in 
Section  III  to  point  out  the  independent  development  of  the 
mental  sciences  on  the  one  hand  and  grammatical  science  on  the 


444  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Other  and  to  indicate  in  the  briefest  manner  the  characterological 
interest  of  the  grammatical  moods. 

In  the  present  section,  I  propose  to  rehearse  some  categories 
of  the  grammar  of  verbs  that  seem  to  me  of  theoretical  and  even 
of  some  practical  value  in  the  analysis  of  delusions.  It  is  un- 
necessary to  insist  that  the  impetus  to  such  comparisons  is  logical 
rather  than  psychological.  It  is  not  that  thought  and  speech, 
pragmatic  beliefs  and  grammatical  moods,  delusions  and  modal 
over-use  or  perversion,  have  developed  pari  passu.  They  may 
have  developed  pari  passu,  and  speech  may  be  as  central  in 
thought  as  aphasia  is  in  the  Wernickean  psychiatry;  but,  if  so, 
the  point  and  origin  of  these  comparisons  did  not  lie  in  that 
identity. 

Are  there  not  logical  categories  ready  to  hand  which  are  su- 
perior to  any  that  may  have  developed  in  grammar?  Notable  is 
the  fact  that  many  logicians  strongly  condemn  the  grammatical 
infection  of  logical  processes  and  the  allied  situation  presented 
by  the  necessity  of  describing  many  logical  processes  in  words. 
But,  aside  from  the  verbalism  of  much  logic,  let  us  consider  a 
moment  the  logical  modalities  in  comparison  with  the  grammatical 
moods  (or,  perhaps  better,  modes). 

There  is  a  certain  relation  between  the  modalities  of  logic^ 
and  the  so-called  modes  or  moods  of  grammar.  The  distinctions 
of  possible,  impossible,  contingent,  and  necessary  are  of  obvious 
value  in  describing  a  variety  of  situations.  In  describing  the 
actual  facts  that  correspond  to  beliefs  and  delusions,  these 
modalities  are  most  exact.  Or,  if  the  'actual  facts'  are  not  to 
be  obtained,  these  modalities  are  of  the  greatest  service  in  de- 
noting what  A  thinks  about  B's  statements,  e.  g.,  what  the  alien- 
ist thinks  is  the  truth  about  his  patient's  delusions.  These 
modalities  are  of  value  in  objective  description.  It  is  even 
possible  to  point  out  the  vicinity  of  the  concept  contingent  to 
the  concept  subjunctive,  of  the  concept  possible  to  the  concept 
optative.  It  could  almost  be  said  that  the  necessary  is  not  far 
from  imperative.     This  would  leave  us  with  the  impossible  to 

*  Peirce,  C.  S.,  "Modality,"  Baldwin's  Diet.  Philos.  and  Psychol.  Macmillan, 
N.  Y.,  1902,  Vol.  2,  p.  92. 


No.  3-]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         445 

correspond  with  the  indicative,  and  perhaps,  with  the  idea  of 
Charles  Peirce  concerning  the  range  of  ignorance  as  corresponding 
with  that  of  knowledge,  some  argument  could  be  made  even  for 
the  vicinity  of  the  concept  impossible  to  that  of  the  indicative. 
In  any  case  the  impossible  is  well  known  not  to  be  the  opposite 
of  the  possible. 

It  must  be  clear  from  the  comparisons  here  sketched  that  the 
classical  modalities,  possible,  impossible,  contingent,  necessary, 
are  of  little  immediate  classificatory  service  for  delusions  or 
even  for  beliefs.  Neither  is  there  enough  known  offhand  about 
any  situation  to  make  sure  of  affixing  the  proper  modal  descrip- 
tion to  the  said  situation,  nor  can  the  contentions  of  the  believer 
or  the  paranoiac  be  subjected  to  experimental  tests  for  the  same 
purpose. 

Accordingly,  though  the  modalities  of  logic  may  be  far  more 
accurate  and  more  representative  of  species  of  truth  than  the 
grammatical  moods,  yet  the  grammatical  moods  will  perhaps 
prove  more  useful  in  immediate  descriptions  of  belief-situations 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  believer,  e.  g.,  of  the  deluded  patient. 

What  we  have  long  wanted  in  psychiatry  is  some  way  of  getting 
at  the  psychic  interiors  of  our  patients.  It  is  a  safe  injunction 
to  hold  fast  from  the  first  to  the  patient's  point  of  view.  The 
familiar  Freudian  distinction  of  manifest  and  latent^  contents 
looks  in  this  direction.  But,  omitting  altogether  at  first  any 
alienists'  constructions  as  to  latent  contents,  the  examiner  who 
adheres  overtly  to  what  is  manifest  in  his  patient's  story  is  too 
apt,  according  to  my  experience,  to  fail  to  distinguish  between 
what  is  true  to  the  patient  and  what  is  true  to  the  alienist.  Let 
us  distinguish  what  is  latent  in  the  patient  from  what  is  manifest 
in  the  patient.  But  let  us  distinguish  between  what  is  manifest 
to  us  in  the  patient  from  what  is  (to  the  best  of  our  beUef) 
manifest  to  the  patient.  Identical  precautions  are  surely  ob- 
servable not  only  for  patients  but  in  the  evaluation  of  all  sorts 
of  direct  evidence. 

One  of  the  most  valuable  of  the  grammatical  categories  under 
which  to  consider  a  delusional  situation  or  any  belief-situation 

*  Freud,  S.,  Die  Traumdeutung,  Deuticke,  Wien,  1900. 


446  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

in  which  the  believer  attributes  a  change  in  the  universe  is  the 
category  of  the  voice.  Again  it  is  important  to  distinguish  the 
actual  situation  as  the  examiner  views  it  from  the  situation  as  the 
patient  or  witness  views  it.  We  stick  to  the  latter.  Does  the 
patient  view  himself  as  in  the  active  voice,  or  in  the  passive 
voice,  or  perhaps  in  the  middle  (reflexive)  voice?  The  question 
cannot  often  safely  be  asked  in  so  simple  a  form.  But  it  is  as  a 
rule  singularly  easy  in  a  few  questions  to  elicit  from  a  deluded 
patient  what  he  believes  as  to  his  own  passivity  or  activity  in  the 
situation  as  he  conceives  it  to  be  altered. 

Perfectly  simple  is  the  felt  passivity  in  certain  victims  of 
hallucination.  The  patients  are  here  as  passive  as  any  recipients 
of  sensation,  and  the  whole  reaction  may  be  one  of  fixation  or 
fascination  prima  facie  passive.  On  the  other  hand,  in  cases  of 
so-called  Gedankenlautwerden,^  the  insistence  of  the  hallucinatory 
or  quasi-hallucinatory  voices  may  be  as  intense  but  is  not  neces- 
sarily one  of  felt  passivity.  The  patient  may  be  best  described 
as  in  the  middle  voice:  his  conscience  is  at  work,  the  still  small 
voice  is  no  longer  small  or  still,  he  himself  is  somehow  the  source 
of  his  difficulty.  Further  reasoning  may  discover  additional 
non-personal  reasons  or  ancient  active  sins  that  are  conceived 
by  the  patient  to  be  actually  responsible  for  the  trouble.  But 
this  further  reasoning  is  not  necessarily  faulty  or  in  any  sense 
delusional  and  may  even  be  as  objective  as  the  alienist's  own 
analysis.  Indeed  the  patient  may  reason  from  manifest  to 
latent  as  skilfully  as  the  alienist  or  may  even  mislead  the  alienist 
by  means  of  constructive  or  over-evaluated  happenings  of  the 
past,  which  may  then  be  taken  falsely  as  actual  objective  hap- 
penings. And  such  constructions  or  distorted  facts  may  prove 
new  points  d'appui  for  false  beliefs.  But  the  fact  that  this  merry 
logical  dance  may  be  led  both  by  patient  and  by  examiner  is  not 
here  in  question.  The  point  I  am  endeavoring  to  make  is  that 
the  vc'ice  in  which  the  patient's  situation  (to  our  best  belief  as  to 
the  patient's  own  point  of  view)  can  best  be  expressed  is  an 
important  category  of  classification.  Several  alienists  to  whom 
I  have  submitted  the  point  are  in  entire  agreement  with  me  and 

•  Cramer,  Die  Halluzinalionen  im  Muskelsinn  bei  Geisteskranken,  Freiburg,  1889. 


No.  3.]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         447 

regard  the  felt  or  conceived  activity,  passivity,  or  reflexivity  of 
the  patient  as  a  surprisingly  comprehensive  characterization  for 
the  total  situations  presented  by  many  deluded  patients.  That 
is  to  say,  though  it  might  be  thought  a  priori  that  a  given  patient 
would  rapidly  shift  in  his  deluded  state  from  active  to  passive  to 
reflexive  (and  permutably),  yet  the  facts  are  commonly  against 
these  rapid  shiftings  of  the  felt  'voice.'  Of  course  the  phases 
do  not  always  take  so  long  in  the  evolution  as  in  Magnan's 
delire  d  evolution  systematisee,^  now  presented  by  Kraepelin  in 
slightly  modified  form  as  paraphrenia  systematica?'  I  shall  not 
here  enter  special  psychiatric  questions;  but  limit  myself  to 
saying  that  in  practice  a  given  delusional  phase  in  a  patient  is 
commonly  well  enough  characterizable  in  a  word  as  active  {e.  g., 
certain  states  of  delusional  grandeur),  as  passive  (e.  g.,  certain 
states  of  delusional  persecution),  or  as  reflexive  {e.  g.,  certain 
states  of  self-accusation).  The  terms  are  good  brief  accounts  of 
what  I  more  cumbrously  designated  formerly^  in  such  terms 
as  'ego-centrifugal,'  'egocentripetal,'  'spreading  outwards,' 
'spreading  inwards,'  and  the  like.  Only  the  term  reflexive  is 
not  so  familiar  and  may  need  replacement  with  hyphenates  of 
the  term  'self,'  or  even  with  'solipsistic,'  'egoistic,'  though 
these  latter  terms  are  often  too  active  in  their  denotation. 

The  fact  that  a  situation  may  be  described  with  correct 
grammar  either  in  the  active  or  in  the  passive  voice  need  not 
trouble  our  analysis.  So  also  can  delusions.  The  point  is  not 
to  identify  grammatical  voice  with  a  type  of  delusional  situation, 
but  to  borrow  from  grammatical  categories  a  classification  suit- 
able for  delusional  situations. 

Nor  need  a  fact  such  as  that  in  certain  Indo-European  develop- 
ments the  passive  verh-form  grew  out  of  the  reflexive  verb-form 
be  taken  as  of  more  than  suggestive  value.  That  fact  might  or 
might  not  be  of  telling  value  in  such  an  analysis  as  ours. 

1  Magnan,  "Lecons  cliniques  sur  les  maladies  mentales  faites  a  I'asile  Sainte- 
Anne,"  Gazette  mid.  de  Paris,  1877,  and  Progres  medical,  1887-1891.  Also  Magnan 
et  Serieux,  Le  delire  chronique  d.  evolution  systematique  (Masson,  Paris,  no  date). 

*  Kraepelin,  Psychiafrie,  ein  LehrbuchfUr  Studierende  und  Aerzte,  8  Aufl.,  Bd.  Ill, 
1913. 

'  Southard,  E.  E.,  "Data  Concerning  Delusions  of  Personality.  With  Note  on 
the  Association  of  Bright's  Disease  and  Unpleasant  Delusions,"  Jour.  Abnormal 
Psychology,  Oct.-Nov.,  1915. 


448  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Central  in  our  considerations  of  the  believer's  active,  reflexive, 
or  passive  voice  is  clearly  the  personality  of  the  believer.  We  are 
thus  naturally  led  to  the  possible  comparative  or  suggestive 
values  of  the  grammatical  person.  The  grammatical  concept 
and  the  common  sense  concept  of  person  are  to  some  extent 
obviously  identical.  The  vast  majority,  if  not  the  entire  group, 
of  psychopathic  delusions  may  be  said  to  revolve  about  the  first 
person.  The  concept  of  the  first  person  (singular)  together  with 
that  of  the  voice  synthesize  to  a  concept  which  makes  a  fairly 
complete  characterization  of  at  least  the  majority  of  delusions. 
Delusions  of  grandeur  as  a  rule  readily  reduce  to  the  active  voice 
and  the  first  person  singular:  the  predicate  situations  are  often 
numerous  and  mutable.  Delusions  of  persecution  reduce  as 
readily  to  the  first  person  in  the  passive  voice.  Reflexive  is  the 
situation  of  the  first  person  in  delusions  of  self-accusation.  Much 
of  psychiatric  interest  doubtless  awaits  a  grouping  of  other  sorts 
of  delusions  even  with  so  slight  a  logical  armamentorium  as  this. 

The  second  person  is  often  involved  in  delusions.  If  we  adhere 
to  a  projection  of  the  delusional  universe  always  from  the 
patient's  point  of  view,  it  must  be  clear  how  important  is  a  dis- 
tinction of  second  and  third  person.  Taken  from  the  psychia- 
trist's point  of  view,  the  dramatis  persona  may  well  all  seem  to 
be  in  the  third  person,  except  perhaps  the  patient  with  whom 
the  psychiatrist  may  feel  like  starting  a  small  new  drama  of  their 
dual  own.  But,  if  we  adhere  as  ever  to  a  construction  from  the 
patient's  point  of  view,  the  difi^erence  between  the  you  of  the 
patient's  plight  and  the  he  or  the  she  may  be  decisive.  Thus 
in  minds  working  more  or  less  on  normal  lines,  it  is  hard  to  con- 
ceive homicidal  ideas  directed  at  a  him  or  a  her.  The  threats 
must  far  more  often  lodge  with  a  you.  On  behalf  of  some  you, 
the  patient  might  conceivably  try  to  do  to  death  a  somewhat 
otherwise  uninteresting  him  or  her.  But  the  majority  of  delu- 
sional situations  are  doubtless  far  more  apt  to  be  egocentric. 

It  may  prove  of  special  interest  whether  hallucinations  of 
hearing  come  from  a  conceived  you  (as  in  a  conversation  or  a 
monologue)  or  from  a  conceived  him  or  her.  There  must  be 
far  greater  intensity  and  dramatic  quality  about  the  statements 
of  some  you  than  from  a  third  person. 


No.  3-]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         449 

It  is  entirely  feasible  to  construct  the  situation  of  these  other 
persons  from  the  standpoint  of  grammatical  voice.  This  has 
recently  arisen  in  some  cases  that  have  come  to  my  attention  of 
folie  a  deux,  in  which  the  so-called  'active'  and  'passive' 
persons  may  need  separate  analysis.  And,  in  situations  far  less 
psychopathic,  the  psychiatrist  has  often  to  execute  an  about- 
face  of  this  sort  to  get  at  the  reactions  of  the  grieved  or  angry 
husband  or  wife. 

I  have  had  to  mention  gender  in  the  previous  paragraphs. 
Krafift-Ebing  and  Freud  have  sufficiently  called  the  world's 
attention  to  the  sexual  situations  that  occur  in  or  make  for  psy- 
chopathies of  various  sorts.  The  routine  collector  of  delusional 
elements  must  however  bear  in  mind  the  necessity  of  establishing 
the  sex  of  all  the  dramatis  personcB,  whether  for  the  purpose  of 
establishing  or  destroying  some  of  the  more  recondite  Freudian 
hypotheses  or  for  the  more  modest  purpose  of  banal  social  ad- 
justments. 

The  value  of  the  number  of  persons  is  not  quite  so  obvious. 
How  many  persons  are  involved  in  the  universe  of  belief  or  of 
delusion  ?  Of  course  the  scene  may  be  peopled  with  any  number  of 
persons  all  acting  normally  even  from  the  patient's  point  of  view. 
But  how  many  are  acting  abnormally  either  as  sources  of  effect 
upon  the  patient,  or  as  the  objects  of  his  action  or  perhaps  as  the 
instruments  of  his  action?  Are  there  perhaps  some  who  may  be 
fused  and  are  working  as  a  collective  unit  (the  family,  union- 
members,  etc.)  from  the  patient's  point  of  view?  Perhaps  here  is 
the  weakest  point  in  the  routine  analysis  of  delusional  situations. 
The  number  of  persons  may  be  one,  two,  three,  several,  many, 
almost  everybody,  everybody,  indeterminate,  etc.;  but  all  that 
can  be  collected  concerning  the  number  (and  obviously  the  sex) 
of  the  persons  involved,  so  far  as  the  patient  conceives  them  to 
be  acting  or  suffering  abnormally,  will  be  found  of  the  greatest 
value  in  analysis.  Increase  or  reduction  in  the  catalogue  of 
intra-delusional  persons  may  prove  of  value  in  prognosis.  I 
should  not  need  to  insist  on  a  special  record  of  persons  remaining 
extra-delusional,  i.  e.,  excluded  from  the  universe  of  the  patient's 
altered  world,  when  by  all  signs  such  persons  would  naturally 
be  involved. 


450  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Most  delusions  of  the  lucid  group  which  we  can  hope  to  analyze 
represent  situations  at  least  dyadic  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
objective  examiner.  They  are  often  triadic,  e.  g.,  delusions  of 
jealousy.  But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  a  dyadic  situation 
may  conceivably  be  monadic  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  patient, 
as  when  he  conceives  that  the  altered  attitude  of  a  relative  is  not 
really  injurious.  But  obviously  enough  there  remains  the 
suspicion  that  the  situation,  even  from  the  patient's  point  of 
view,  is  effectively  dyadic.  Again  delusions  of  jealousy  may 
masquerade  as  dyadic. 

Whether  there  is  any  important  group  of  essentially  tetradic 
delusional  situations  is  worth  inquiry.  Among  fictional  situa- 
tions as  depicted  by  novelists,  the  tetradic  situation  with  double 
shifting  of  courtiers  is  not  unusual,  though  it  may  well  be  a  more 
symmetrical  situation  than  the  world  itself  is  apt  to  show.  So 
far,  I  have  not  found  many  good  instances  of  essentially  tetradic 
delusional  situations,  i.  e.,  when  the  elements  are  persons.  In 
numerous  instances  where  four  persons  are  involved,  the  fourth 
turns  out  merely  ancillary  to  the  third  and  to  disappear,  as  it 
were,  by  the  identity  of  indiscernibles.  But  this  needs  much 
concrete  case  analysis. 

The  important  tense-distinctions  of  verb-forms  recall  the 
importance  of  the  time  element  in  delusions.  Some  of  Del- 
briick's  designations  for  general  time  relations  of  action  are 
suggestive,  e.  g.,  iterative,  frequentative.  Terminative  actions, 
those  conceived  to  have  a  beginning,  an  ending,  or  both,  suggest 
obvious  distinctions  as  to  conceived  delusional  situations.  Of 
course  the  stock  case-history  should  and  often  does  contain  a 
sufficient  account  of  these  matters,  as  the  term  history  insists. 
Still,  I  fear  that  we  do  not  always  keep  separate  in  mind  the 
objective  anamnesis  (to  use  a  frequent  medical  term)  and  the 
anamnesis  or  catamnesis  as  the  patient  describes  it  and  believes 
it  to  have  occurred.  Thus  the  one  noxious  event  in  the  whole 
history  may  have  occurred  as  it  were  aoristically  at  a  special 
moment  or  brief  period,  and  the  rest  of  the  history  may  seem 
to  the  patient  an  entirely  natural  train  of  consequences.  In  the 
direct  or  indirect  psychotherapy,  so  apt  to  be  employed  in  all 


No.  3-]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         45 1 

sorts  of  not-yet-defined  delusions,  quite  a  different  technique 
might  need  to  be  employed  for  the  delusional  universe  with  an 
aoristic  event  long  past  than  for  a  universe  with  iterative  factors 
or  with  'present  perfect'  characters,  etc. 

I  arrive  once  more  at  the  perhaps  central  topic  of  the  moods. 
At  the  conclusion  of  the  last  section  I  spoke  of  the  major  distinc- 
tions as  to  moods,  so  far  as  the  most  thoroughly  studied  Indo- 
European  grammar  is  concerned.  I  shall  not  in  this  paper  deal 
intimately  with  the  topic,  as  I  conceive  that  much  more  case 
analysis  should  be  available  than  I  have  as  yet  looked  over. 

But  I  wish  to  call  attention  to  the  vast  wealth  of  special  desig- 
nations of  moods  which  are  found  in  the  gradually  increasing 
group  of  languages  now  being  brought  under  scientific  study. 
Most  of  these  moods  appear  to  me  to  fall  rather  readily  into  one 
or  other  of  the  subjunctive  and  optative  groups.  Thus  the 
conditional  certainly  belongs  with  the  subjunctives,  and  might 
perhaps  be  thought  to  offer  a  better  general  designation  for  the 
group.  So  too  the  potential.  But  desiderative,  precative,  jussive, 
probably  belong  with  the  optatives.  As  to  the  verb-forms  and 
their  special  origin  and  appearance,  the  logician  can  have  little 
to  say.  The  point  is,  rather,  that,  if  a  verb-form  exists  to  which 
a  special  name  has  been  given,  then  at  least  some  special  shade  of 
meaning  has  been  thought  to  exist  by  the  grammatical  analyst. 
This  shade  of  meaning  probably  expresses  some  rather  concrete 
belief  of  intra  vitam  origin,  not  cooked  up  for  a  special  purpose 
or  at  least  for  any  psychiatric  purpose. 

I  have  more  or  less  in  hand  a  collection  of  these  mood  names 
from  different  grammars,  of  which  a  set  probably  large  enough 
for  these  purposes  is  in  existence  at  the  Boston  Public  Library. 
The  publication  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society^  gives 
a  convenient  large  list  of  languages,  those  in  fact  into  which  the 
Bible  has  been  translated. 

I  hope  to  show,  but  will  shortly  dismiss  here,  the  possibility 
that    the    transformation    of    'subjunctive'    beliefs    into     'in- 

1  Darlow  and  Moule,  Historical  Catalogue  of  the  Printed  Editions  of  Holy  Scripture 
in  the  Library  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  Bible  House,  London,  1903, 
asp.  Part  IV,  Indexes. 


452  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

dicative'  ones  means  paranoia  of  a  pragmatic  sort,  whereas  an 
identical  transformation  of  'optative'  beliefs  leads  to  delusions 
of  the  fantastic  sort.  '  Transformation '  may  be  better  rendered 
figuratively  by  such  terms  as  degeneration,  collapse,  crystalliza- 
tion, condensation,  degradation,  etc. 

V. 

The  object  of  this  paper  has  been  to  illustrate  the  method  of 
Royce's  logical  seminary  at  Harvard.  No  attempt  has  been 
made  to  describe  the  method,  which  is  comparative  rather  than 
observational  or  statistical.^  When  the  logician  superposes  the 
categories  of  Science  A  upon  the  material  of  Science  B,  or  com- 
pares the  categories  of  both,  he  is  not  at  all  sure  of  important 
results.  If  he  obtains  too  extensive  or  too  numerous  identities 
by  means  of  his  comparisons,  he  may  be  compelled  to  decide  that 
identity  of  categories  means  actual  unity  of  materials.  Thus,  in 
the  present  instance,  the  reader  may  be  the  more  ready  to 
swallow  the  identity  of  certain  categories  in  grammar  and  psycho- 
pathology,  simply  because  he  fundamentally  believes  in  a  larger 
degree  of  identity  of  speech  and  thought.  In  the  event  of  such 
a  nominalistic  view  as  that,  the  only  merit  of  the  present  essay 
would  consist  in  spreading  a  sound  method  over  new  materials 
of  the  same  sort;  the  method  would  not  then  be  comparative  in  a 
very  rich  sense  of  the  term.  But,  even  if  speech  and  thought 
are  as  closely  allied  as,  e.  g..  Max  M tiller  thought  them  to  be,^ 
the  fact  still  remains  that  the  categories  of  linguistics  and  of 
psychology  have  not  been  wrought  into  their  present  form  by  the 
same  group  of  men  or  under  the  same  group  of  interests.  If  there 
is  a  partial  identity  of  scientific  materials,  there  is  no  evidence  of 
identity  of  categories.  The  comparative  method  will  then  obtain 
a  certain  scope,  even  if  that  scope  is  limited  to  trying-out  of  special 
methods  devised  by  linguists  inexpert  in  technical  psychology. 

1  hesitate  to  set  forth  the  point;  but  I  am  left  with  a  queer 
impression   that  linguistics  falls  short  of  representing  logic  in 

•  Royce,  J.,  "The  Principles  of  Logic,"  Ency.  Philos.,  Sci.  I,  Vol.  i,  Logic. 
Macmillan,  London,  1913. 

2  MUller,  F.  Max.     The  Science  of  Thought,  Scribner,  New  York,  1887. 


No.  3.]    APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL  CATEGORIES.         453 

somewhat  the  same  way  that  psychopathology  falls  short  of  repre- 
senting psychology.  I  do  not  so  much  refer  to  the  prevalence 
of  concepts  Uke  'phonetic  decay,'  'empty  words,'  'anomalism,' 
etc.,  in  linguistics,  although  these  concepts  certainly  suggest 
human  frailty  quite  outside  the  frame  of  classical  logic.  I  do  not 
wish  to  construct  a  false  epigram  to  the  effect  that  linguistics  is  a 
kind  of  pathology  of  logic,  attractive  as  this  epigram  might  be. 
My  point  is  that  human  facts  are  got  at  more  readily  in  linguistics 
and  in  psychopathology  than  in  logic  and  in  so-called  normal 
psychology. 

For  example,  if  I  try  to  determine  the  logical  modality  of 
something  and  to  affix  the  proper  epithet  (necessary,  impossible, 
contingent,  possible),  I  sink  into  a  morass  of  factual  doubts. 
But,  equipped  with  the  fundamental  grammatical  moods  (im- 
perative, indicative,  subjunctive,  optative),  I  can  dismiss  my 
doubts  by  describing  them  under  one  of  these  mood  aspects, 
regardless  of  objective  reality,  truth  to  me,  truth  to  Mrs.  Grundy, 
or  any  situation  except  that  depicted  by  the  statement  in  ques- 
tion. The  grammatical  moods  deal  with  evidence  unweighed; 
the  logical  modalities  require  more  weighing  of  evidence  than  is 
as  a  rule  humanly  possible.  Psychopathology  also  deals  with 
evidence  unweighed.  Particularly  is  this  true  of  that  portion 
of  psychopathology  which  deals  with  false  beliefs.  Granted  that 
some  beliefs  are  prima  facie  fantastic  and  to  us  incredible.  By 
the  patient  these  fantastic  and  incredible  beliefs  are  believed, 
but  the  nature  and  history  of  these  fantastic  beliefs  may  well  be 
investigated  to  learn  whether  we  are  not  dealing  with  a  so-called 
wish-fulfilment  (a  Freudian  technical  term)  or  with  a  kind  of 
degradation  of  what  the  linguist  might  term  an  optative  attitude. 
But  the  majority  of  false  beliefs  are  not  prima  facie  fantastic  and 
incredible.  They  on  the  contrary  require  the  test  of  experience. 
They  represent  pragmatic  situations.  Granting  the  truth  of 
certain  hypotheses,  we  say,  these  beliefs  might  be  accepted  also 
as  truth.  Our  thesis  is  that  these  pragmatic  delusions  do  not 
represent  a  conceived  wish-fulfilment,  if  by  wish  is  meant  a 
fancied  situation.  On  the  other  hand,  these  pragmatic  delusions 
appear  to  hang  rather  upon  the  degradation  of  a  subjunctive 


454  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

attitude,  that  is,  upon  taking  as  true  a  certain  hypothesis.  But 
neither  fantastic  nor  pragmatic  delusions  can  readily  be  classed 
under  the  logical  modalities,  e.  g.,  as  possible  or  contingent, 
however  possible  and  contingent  they  actually  seem  to  the 
patient.  In  any  event  they  are  or  will  shortly  turn  out  to  be 
impossible,  logically  speaking,  and,  if  the  patient  were  to  ascribe 
any  logical  modality  thereto,  he  would  be  likely  to  deal  in  neces- 
sities on  the  one  hand  and  impossibilities  on  the  other.  Gram- 
matically speaking,  the  degraded  optative  belief  may  even  set 
into  an  imperative,  and  beliefs  degraded  from  both  the  optative 
and  the  subjunctive  appeal  to  the  patient  as  indicative,  if  not 
yet  imperative. 

From  our  superficial  study  of  the  categories  of  grammar  as 
they  revolve  about  the  verbs,  we  have  come  upon  two  consider- 
ations of  value  that  are  not  entirely  obvious,  the  psychopathic 
analogue  of  the  grammatical  'voice,'  and  the  question  of  two 
main  types  of  delusion  degraded  respectively  from 'subjunctive' 
and  'optative'  attitudes. 

I  believe  that  the  '  voice '  distinction  will  forthwith  appeal  to 
all  psychiatrists  as  valid  within  its  range.  The  distinction  seeks 
to  express  the  relation  between  the  world  and  the  individual  from 
the  individual's  point  of  view  under  two  forms,  {a)  that  in  which 
the  self  is  active  and  (6)  that  in  which  the  self  is  passive  in  rela- 
tion to  the  environment ;  but  in  the  third  place  (c)  the  relation  of 
the  individual  to  himself  is  suggested,  viz.,  under  the  'middle' 
or  reflexive  relation.  Whether  the  reflexive  relations  of  the  self 
break  up  further  into  a  group  where  the  'I'  dominates  the 
'me'  and  another  where  the  'me'  overpowers  the  'I'  (that 
is,  whether  the  ego  is  sometimes  active  in  respect  to  itself  and 
sometimes  passive),  is  a  question  partly  of  fact,  but  more  of  the 
nature  of  the  self  and  of  the  whole  difficult  topic  of  self-activity. 

Whether  the  distinction  between  pragmatic  delusions  (as 
it  were,  precipitated  subjunctives)  and  fantastic  delusions  (as 
it  were,  precipitated  optatives)  is  valid,  must  remain  undeter- 
mined. The  distinction  has  at  least  the  value  of  suggesting  a 
similar  distinction  in  human  character  in  general;  both  distinc- 
tions may  be  derived  from  identical  psychological  facts. 


No.  3.]     APPLICATION  OF  GRAMMATICAL   CATEGORIES.        455 

If  in  the  practical  handling  of  a  patient,  or  indeed  of  anyone 
else  in  a  situation  hard  to  interpret,  the  observer  can  make 
out  the  'voice'  of  the  subject's  situation  from  the  subject's 
point  of  view,  and  can  secondly  determine  whether  the  difficulty 
rests  upon  trouble  with  hypotheses  or  trouble  with  wishes,  much 
is  gained  surely. 

We  saw  also  from  our  incidental  study  of  person,  number,  and 
gender  how  important  might  become  the  question  of  monadic, 
dyadic,  triadic,  or  polyadic  situations  involving  false  beliefs. 
The  collection  of  groups  of  such  situations  for  analysis  is  certainly 
indicated,  naturally  with  invariable  reference  to  the  'voice,' 
active  or  passive,  of  the  patient  or  central  figure.  Fiction  and 
drama  could  throw  some  light  on  these  matters. 

In  the  gathering  of  data  for  analysis,  it  is  clear  also  that  the 
time-relations  must  also  be  studied  from  the  patient's  point  of 
view,  to  the  end  of  determining  whether  the  particular  subjunc- 
tive precipitate  has  relation  to  some  central  point  in  the  past, 
whether  the  particular  optative  precipitate  has  relation  to  a 
present  or  present  perfect  situation,  or  whether  other  'tenses' 

come  in  question. 

E.  E.  Southard. 

Boston  State  Hospital. 


LOVE  AND   LOYALTY. 

/^^NE  who  like  me  has  gone  to  Royce  for  wisdom  now  this 
^-^  long  time  and  never  come  away  empty,  may  yet  live  to 
know  that  some  of  his  receivings  are  more  his  belongings  than 
others.  Thus  if  it  ever  happen  to  me  that  I  find  my  hold  on  the 
Absolute  slackening  and  the  thing  slipping  from  me,  I  cannot 
think  that  even  in  that  day  I  shall  have  forgotten  two  words 
I  have  heard.  Love  and  loyalty,  loyalty  and  love:  this  pair 
I  expect  will  still  be  singing  its  burden  in  my  soul  after  other 
things  have  left  off  singing  there.  But  I  hope  that  when  this 
day  comes  I  shall  know  better  than  I  do  now  whether  love  and 
loyalty  are  two  names  for  the  same  thing,  or  whether  they  are 
not  the  same,  yet  brothers  and  friends,  or  whether  in  the  end  they 
are  not  rather  enemies  of  which  one  can  survive  only  if  the  other 
doesn't.  Nor  do  I  know,  though  I  should  very  much  like  to, 
how  Royce  himself  would  answer  these  questions.  Sometimes 
the  words  fall  in  such  close  juxtaposition  in  his  writings  that  I 
wonder  whether  they  do  not  express  a  single  idea  whose  peculiar 
quality  is  just  unselfishness.  But  again  I  bethink  me  that  to  be 
just  unselfish  is  not  enough  for  an  absolutist,  if  for  anyone;  that 
giving  up  can  only  be  justified  when  it  is  a  means  of  acquiring, 
and  I  wonder  what  loyalty  can  have  to  say  for  itself  half  as  con- 
vincing as  the  things  love  could  point  to.  Until  at  last  I  find 
myself  speculating  whether  if  love  had  its  perfect  way  with  us 
there  would  be  any  place  left  for  loyalty  in  our  lives,  and  whether 
we  should  not  look  back  on  it  then  as  on  a  virtue  happily  outlived. 
And  this  may  be  my  matter  in  a  nutshell — is  not  loyalty  a 
thing  to  be  outlived  and  is  not  that  which  alone  can  enable  us 
to  live  it  down  a  love  so  perfect  it  calls  for  no  sacrifices?  Some 
such  thought  has  long  been  with  me,  but  if  I  am  to  lay  my 
troubles  before  you  it  is  time  I  put  aside  a  language  too  rich  in 
sentimental  associations  and  took  up  the  idiom  I  love  best,  that 
of  cold  and  if  may  be  mathematical  definition. 

456 


LOVE  AND  LOYALTY.  457 

Any  definition  of  loyalty  that  could  have  meaning  for  me 
must  assume  the  existence  of  something  many  deny  to  have  either 
existence  or  meaning,  and  which  I  shall  call  in  my  own  way  the 
mind  of  a  group,  or  a  group  mind.  The  conception  of  a  mind 
belonging  to  a  group  of  beings  each  one  of  which  has  a  mind  of 
its  own,  yet  such  that  the  mind  of  the  group  is  no  more  to  be 
known  from  a  study  of  its  parts  than  is  the  mentality  of  Peter 
from  the  psychology  of  Paul,  is  a  very  old  conception  and  perhaps 
for  that  reason  supposed  by  some  to  be  old-fashioned  and 
foolish.  It  is  a  mere  analogy,  they  say,  and  a  very  thin  one  at 
that,  to  speak  of  a  group  of  organisms  as  itself  an  organism:  it 
is  Plato,  it  is  Cusanus,  if  you  will,  but  it  is  not  modern.  Bene- 
detto Croce  even  goes  so  far  as  to  be  polite  about  the  matter. 
"The  State  is  not  an  entity,  but  a  fluid  complex  of  various  re- 
lations among  individuals.  It  may  be  convenient  to  delimit  this 
complex  and  to  entify  it  for  the  sake  of  contrasting  it  with  other 
complexes.  No  doubt  this  is  so,  but  let  us  leave  to  the  jurist  the 
excogitation  of  this  and  the  like  distinctions, — fictions,  but 
opportune  fictions— being  careful  not  to  call  his  work  absurd. 
It  is  enough  for  us  to  be  sure  we  do  not  forget  that  a  fiction  is  a 
fiction." 

To  Royce  the  group  mind  is  far  from  being  a  fiction,  though 
he  may  prefer  to  call  it  by  some  other  name  than  group  mind, 
— ^maybe  universal  mind  or  universal  will.  But  if  to  him  it 
seems  natural,  as  it  does  to  me,  to  recognize  group  minds  while 
to  Croce  the  entity  is  but  a  polite  fiction  to  be  pleasantly  dis- 
missed there  must  be  some  lack  of  definition  befogging  our  issue. 
Nor  can  I  think  of  any  way  in  which  old  issues  can  better  be 
made  clear  than  by  old  images.  Aristotle  would  not  have 
asked  when  and  where  do  new  entities  appear,  but  where  and 
when  must  we  take  account  of  new  forms.  Now  matter  was 
informed  for  Aristotle  when  the  behavior  of  some  class  of  beings 
was  recognized  to  be  predictable  in  terms  of  purpose.  Thus 
earth,  water,  air,  and  fire  sought  their  proper  places,  one  below, 
another  above,  and  the  others  in  between.  But  we  remember 
how  no  sooner  had  these  elements  reached  their  proper  places 
than  transformed  by  the  sun's  heat  they  were  no  longer  at  home 


458  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

where  they  found  themselves,  but  must  needs  seek  their  new 
homes  anew.  Thus  homeward  bound  in  opposite  directions 
they  coUided  and  became  entangled,  so  that  mixtures  of  the  four 
appeared  which  as  it  proved  kept  their  proportions  for  a  longer 
or  shorter  while  ere  they  lost  their  equilibrium  and  fell  apart 
again.  Among  these  mixtures  were  vegetables  and  animals 
and  men,  but  Aristotle  is  very  far  from  defining  this  new  class, 
organisms,  in  terms  of  the  quantities  of  the  elements  that  enter 
into  their  bodily  composition.  No,  what  they  have  in  common 
and  all  they  have  in  common  is  a  new  purpose,  that  of  self- 
preservation  (and,  if  we  are  to  follow  Aristotle  rigorously,  that 
of  type  preservation).  But  why  in  this  class  of  beings  does  a 
new  form  appear  when  there  is  nothing  in  any  one  of  them  but 
so  much  earth,  so  much  water,  and  so  much  of  the  rest?  Because, 
I  take  it,  in  order  that  the  purpose  of  the  group  may  be  realized, 
the  purpose  of  each  constituent  of  that  group  must  be  defeated : 
when  the  earth  in  us  finds  its  way  back  to  earth  and  our 
fire  to  fire,  then  we  are  no  more.  Which  is  the  fundamental 
difference  between  us  and  them:  if  we  win  they  lose;  if  they 
win  we  are  done  for.  The  whole  has  a  purpose  whose  realiza- 
tion is  only  possible  if  the  purposes  defining  the  parts  are  given 
up  for  it. 

I  suppose  Croce  would  say  that  nothing  better  could  be  offered 
in  support  of  a  modern  fiction  than  an  ancient  fable,  and  I 
confess  that  I  can  think  of  nothing  better  fitted  to  set  forth  the 
complex  problem  of  how  beings  of  one  mind  can  combine  to 
form  groups  of  another  mind,  than  Aristotle's  account  of  the 
way  elements  in  the  form  of  mechanism  combine  to  produce  a 
group  with  that  other  form,  life.  Perhaps  I  can  make  out  the 
connection  between  old  and  new  ideas  by  a  single  example.  I 
know  of  no  fellow  easier  to  get  along  with  than  your  average 
Parisian:  many  a  time  have  I  sat  at  his  board,  looked  in  his  eyes, 
listened  to  his  amusing  wit,  and  wondered  how  the  great-grand- 
father of  my  host  could  have  been  part  of  the  Reign  of  Terror. 
And  yet  I  suppose  the  Parisian  of  today  is  not  very  different  from 
the  Parisian  of  four  generations  ago,  when  groups  of  these  same 
Parisians  were  ranging  the  streets  of  Paris  crying,  "  A  la  lanterne ! " 


No.  3.]  LOVE  AND  LOYALTY.  459 

However  much  it  was  in  the  character  of  the  Pierre,  Paul,  Jean, 
and  Jaques  Bonhomme  of  those  old  days  to  steer  for  home,  their 
distributive  tendency  was  contradicted  by  their  collective  ten- 
dency. A  new  form,  a  new  entity  had  appeared :  it  was  the  spirit 
of  the  mob.  It  may  be  pleasant  to  call  such  new  entities  fictions, 
but  wouldn't  it  be  a  more  dangerous  fiction  to  suppose  these  new 
entities  pleasant,  and  isn't  the  object  we  have  defined  as  hard 
and  fast  a  fact  as  any  in  human  experience? 

I  must  let  this  single  illustration  take  the  place  of  what  might 
at  some  other  time  grow  into  a  systematic  account  of  the  varieties 
of  group  minds  that  history  and  personal  experience  reveal  to 
us.  For  my  world  is  highly  organized, — groups  within  groups 
and  groups  within  these  in  a  way  one  might  have  learned  at  the 
feet  of  Nicolaus  or  by  gathering  one's  history  from  Gierke's 
Geschichte  des  deutschen  Rechts.  But  on  this  occasion  instead  of 
going  into  all  this  literature  and  all  this  philosophy,  let  me  come 
back  to  the  matter  of  loyalty's  worth.  There  would  be  no  such 
thing  as  a  demand  for  loyalty  were  there  no  call  for  a  man  to 
deny  his  wish  for  home,  whether  home  be  on  earth  or  on  high  for 
him,  for  the  sake  of  organizing  himself  into  a  group,  which  means 
as  we  have  seen  sacrificing  his  purpose  for  the  group  purpose. 
Now  what  you  think  of  the  value  of  this  sacrifice  depends  alto- 
gether on  the  esteem  in  which  you  hold  group  minds.  If  you 
can  find  some  principle  on  which  to  estimate  their  dignity  as 
something  worth  dying  for  in  part  or  altogether,  then  loyalty 
may  be  the  last  word  of  virtue.  But  if  you  find  that  at  their 
very  best  there  is  something  rather  primitive,  sometimes  amoe- 
boid, sometimes  tigerish  about  such  minds,  then  you  should 
seriously  consider  whether  your  biped  soul  owes  anything  more 
to  this  polypod  entity  than  the  entity  owes  to  it.  Merging  one- 
self into  something  big  may  not  be  just  the  same  as  reaching  for 
something  high. 

But  I  am  not  belittling  loyalty.  It  is  a  great  virtue  so  long 
as  it  understands  itself  to  be  making  a  virtue  of  necessity.  Just 
so  is  it  a  great  virtue  to  acquire  equanimity  in  the  face  of  death, 
so  that  not  being  able  to  invent  a  way  of  getting  around  the 
thing  one  may  accept  it  for  the  time  being  without  disturbing 


46o  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

oneself  or  one's  friends  more  than  the  episode  calls  for.  Still  if 
I  had  some  genius  to  spend,  I  should  rather  contribute  it  to  the 
suppression  of  dying  than  to  the  cultivation  of  a  cheerful  manner 
in  dying.  So  should  I  rather  spend  my  time  if  it  were  worth 
while  in  wearing  away  the  conditions  that  make  loyalty  necessary 
than  in  developing  a  spirit  of  loyalty.  And  so,  or  I  mistake  him, 
would  Royce;  for  I  can't  get  over  the  impression  that  for  him  too 
loyalty  is  but  a  half-way  house  on  the  road  to  something  better 
■ — which  something  better  is  love. 

It  is  with  relief  I  find  a  definition  of  love  can  be  effected  which 
makes  no  very  heavy  demands  upon  one's  sentimental  experience, 
in  fact  requires  no  more  in  that  way  than  a  fair  understand- 
ing of  the  theory  of  substitutions.  For  the  peculiar  quality 
Royce  finds  in  the  idea  of  love  is  that  love  individuates.  This 
its  quality  is  for  him  its  virtue  also  and  its  excellence,  so  that  the 
more  love  individuates  the  more  is  it  love.  We  are  far  enough 
from  the  days  when  a  Plato  could  hold  the  love  to  be  higher 
that  had  detached  itself  from  the  individual  and  attached  itself 
to  the  quality,  had  forgotten  the  beautiful  being  to  think  only 
of  his  beauty.  For  Royce  love  is  not  love  unless  it  has  succeeded 
in  making  its  object  irreplaceable. 

Now  I  do  not  know  whether  this  constitutes  a  complete  de- 
finition of  love.  There  is  something  hopeful  about  the  sug- 
gestion that  it  may  do  so,  for  if  no  one  has  been  able  to  say 
anything  very  articulate  about  love,  neither  has  anyone  said 
much  that  is  intelligible  about  individuation.  But  certain 
difficulties  occur  to  one.  Is  love  the  only  thing  that  individuates? 
If  there  is  such  a  thing  as  Platonic  hate,  which  I  suppose  would 
be  the  sort  of  hate  that  hates  the  sin  and  not  the  sinner,  why 
should  there  not  be  such  a  thing  as  a  romantic  hate  whose  object 
would  be  just  the  sinner  and  not  his  fault?  Or  may  not  a 
process  of  individuation  go  on,  cold  and  impassible,  untouched 
either  by  hate  or  love? 

One  day  Flaubert  took  his  disciple  by  the  hand  and  led  him 
into  the  secret  places  of  art.  The  talent  of  the  artist,  he  said, 
is  a  long  patience  spent  in  learning  how  to  portray  so  that  your 


No.  3.]  LOVE  AND  LOYALTY.  461 

portrayal  leaves  the  object  it  offers  just  as  individual  as  the 
thing  it  found.  "When  you  pass  a  grocer  sitting  at  his  door,  or  a 
concierge  smoking  his  pipe,  or  a  stand  of  cabs,  show  me  this 
grocer  and  this  concierge,  their  pose,  their  physical  appearance, 
suggesting  also  by  the  skill  of  your  image  all  their  moral  nature, 
in  such  wise  that  I  do  not  confuse  them  with  any  other  grocer 
or  with  any  other  concierge.  And  make  me  see  with  a  single 
word  in  what  a  certain  cab  horse  is  unlike  fifty  others  following 
him  or  going  before." 

Why  then,  beside  love  and  hate,  art  too  claims  to  be  that  which 
individuates, — and  not  because,  if  we  may  believe  a  certain 
philosophically  minded  critic,  art  has  borrowed  anything  of 
love  or  hate.  This  disciple  of  Flaubert,  this  Maupassant,  carried 
out  his  master's  teachings  if  ever  an  artist  did,  but  there  is  that 
in  his  way  of  doing  it  which  makes  one  feel  that  Anatole  France's 
account  of  him  is  not  altogether  wanting:  "  He  is  the  great  painter 
of  the  human  grimace.  He  paints  without  hate  and  without 
love,  without  anger  and  without  pity, — hard-fisted  peasants, 
drunken  sailors,  lost  women,  obscure  clerks  dried  up  in  the  air 
of  the  office,  and  all  the  humble  folk  whose  humility  is  without 
beauty  and  without  merit.  All  these  grotesques  and  all  these 
unfortunates  he  shows  us  so  distinctly  that  we  think  we  see  them 
with  our  own  eyes  and  find  them  more  real  than  reality  itself. 
He  is  a  skilful  artist  who  knows  he  has  done  all  there  is  to  do 
when  he  has  given  life  to  things.  His  indifference  is  as  indifferent 
as  nature." 

I  am  not  so  very  confident  that  all  these  claimants  to  the  right 
of  individuating — love,  hate,  art — are  equal  claimants.  As  for 
hate,  some  poverty  of  experience  may  account  for  the  fact  that 
all  I  know  of  this  romantically  valued  emotion  is  directed  against 
persons  unknown  whose  manner  of  conducting  themselves  on  the 
earth  beneath  and  in  the  waters  under  the  earth  shows  nothing 
more  clearly  than  that  they  have  forgotten  the  human  being  and 
are  utterly  lost  in  loyalty.  A  hate  of  such  poor  quality  cannot 
well  be  said  to  individuate,  and  it  is  certainly  not  any  experience 
of  my  own  that  would  lead  me  to  suppose  romantic  hate  as  we 


462  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

have  imagined  it  to  be  real.  Respecting  the  impassibility  of 
the  creative  artist  I  am  no  less  skeptical,  and  so  I  think  is  France 
at  bottom,  for  of  this  same  artist  whose  indifference  is  as  indif- 
ferent as  nature  he  says  in  another  passage  of  the  same  appre- 
ciation that  his  hardened  hero  "is  ashamed  of  nothing  but  his 
large  native  kindliness,  careful  to  hide  what  is  most  exquisite 
in  his  soul." 

No,  I  am  not  convinced  that  love  has  any  rivals  in  the  art  of 
individuating,  and  if  not,  then  to  call  it  that  which  individuates 
is  to  define  it  completely.  But  whether  it  is  a  deduction  from 
this  definition  or  whether  it  is  an  independent  element  in  a  fuller 
definition  of  love,  it  must  be  set  down  as  an  important  fact  about 
it  that  love  wants  the  will  and  desire  of  the  beloved  to  prevail. 
It  wants  the  will  of  another  to  prevail,  and  as  the  easiest  and 
most  obvious  way  of  bringing  about  this  result  is  to  yield  its 
own  will,  it  has  generally  been  supposed  that  love  was  less  the 
art  of  individuating  than  the  art  of  yielding.  But  this  is  just 
the  mistake  that  has  prevented  love  from  taking  its  place 
among  the  more  seriously  meant  categories  of  philosophy  and 
realities  of  life;  for  this  yielding  disposition  that  might  be  sup- 
posed to  make  for  peace  in  a  republic  of  lovers  is  the  very  matter 
which  introduces  trouble  and  perplexity  there.  It  is  the  very 
matter  which  has  made  traditional  Christianity  less  effective 
than  it  might  have  been,  failing  where  it  fails  not  because  there  is 
anything  better  to  be  conceived  than  its  gospel  of  love,  but  be- 
cause it  has  supposed  a  good  heart  and  convinced  will  was 
enough  to  bring  about  its  kingdom. 

Our  two  great  experiments  at  loving — the  love  of  man  and 
woman  and  the  love  of  one's  neighbor — have  been  too  much  alike 
in  this,  that  they  both  supposed  love  to  be  the  sort  of  thing  one 
could  fall  into  and  be  done  with.  But  it  is  clear  this  is  not  at 
all  the  way  of  the  matter,  and  in  our  poor  imaginings  about  the 
lovers'  republic  we  have  been  too  much  guided  by  our  imperfect 
experience  of  what  our  loves  have  been  to  think  our  way  into 
what  the  love  that  individuates  ought  to  be.  Oh,  yes,  our  love 
has  yielded;  its  great  vice  has  been  its  contentment  in  yielding 


No.  3.]  g  LOVE  AND  LOYALTY.  463 

rather  than  suffer  the  labor  and  unrest  of  that  thinking  which 
alone  could  have  saved  its  kingdom.  In  this  dear,  illogical 
passion  for  yielding  we  have  been  content  with  a  division  of  the 
spoils:  one  is  allowed  to  give  this,  the  other  that;  one  now,  the 
other  then,  and  so  we  have  patched  up  our  lovers'  quarrel  as 
best  we  could  without  logic.  But  logic,  which  is  supposed  to 
have  nothing  to  do  with  love  and  has  had  little  enough  to  do  with 
the  old  loves  of  this  world,  has  everything  to  do  with  the  love 
that  individuates.  For  the  moment  love  begins  to  be  a  mutual 
affair  neither  lover  has  the  right  to  usurp  the  privilege  of  giving, 
else  what  is  left  for  the  other  lover  to  do?  Without  logic  our 
lovers  are  doomed  to  stand  bowing  to  each  other  before  the  door 
of  promise  till  time  grows  gray. 

However,  besides  logic  there  is  such  a  thing  as  bad  logic,  which 
is  perhaps  nothing  more  than  a  well  meant  half-thoughtfulness 
in  presence  of  puzzling  experience.  As  a  result  of  this  half- 
thoughtfulness  there  has  sometimes  crept  a  half-reasonableness 
into  the  matter  we  are  considering,  which  would  begin  by  sug- 
gesting that  the  various  and  contradictory  desires  of  lovers, 
though  equally  strong,  cannot,  save  by  improbable  chance,  be 
equally  high  and  worth  while;  that  therefore  the  logical  thing 
to  do  would  be  to  let  the  lower  ideal  recognize  the  higher  and 
bow  to  it,  while  the  higher  might  somehow  forget  its  longing  to 
give  and  content  its  poor  heart  with  being  given  to. 

There  are  many  difficulties  in  the  way  of  making  such  an  ac- 
count of  the  affair  persuasive,  but  there  are  more  serious  troubles 
ahead  of  anyone  who  would  try  to  make  it  meaningful.  Chief 
of  these  is  the  hopelessness  of  defining  high  and  low  in  the  matter 
of  purposes  and  ideals.  Here  once  more  Royce  is  quick  to  an- 
alyze the  difficulty  and  remove  it;  for,  if  I  read  him  aright,  he 
sees  no  way,  and  no  more  do  I,  by  which  the  value  of  ultimate 
objects  of  desire  may  be  compared.  It  is  easy  to  calculate  the 
better  means  but  how  is  one  to  know  the  better  end?  Only  this 
may  we  do — we  may  discover  that  purposes  which  seem  con- 
tradictory are  not  really  so,  and  that  neither  need  sacrifice  itself 
to  the  other  if  thought  be  allowed  to  work  its  perfect  work.     No 


464  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

doubt  happiness  lies  in  getting  what  we  want,  but  this  is  not  the 
same  as  getting  what  we  think  we  want,  as  capturing  what  we 
go  after,  for  our  wants  are  none  the  less  difficult  to  make  out 
because  they  are  our  own. 

This,  then,  is  thought's  infinitely  difficult  task  in  the  service  of 
love,  to  analyze  apparent  desires  until  it  has  found  the  real  want 
at  the  core  of  appearance,  while  the  postulate  on  which  alone  the 
advent  of  the  kingdom  becomes  possible  is  that  thought  may  find 
our  real  wants  not  contradictory.  The  times  are  not  without 
sign  that  Christianity  as  an  ethics  is  coming  to  realize  how  very 
intellectual  is  the  task  it  has  set  itself  in  trying  to  bring  the 
kingdom  of  Christ's  vision  to  be  on  earth.  What  Christianity 
most  needs,  writes  Tennant,  is  a  philosophy. 

The  twenty  minutes  we  allow  ourselves  for  our  communications 
have  usually  proved  ample  for  a  person  of  industry  and  thrift 
to  make  himself  thoroughly  misunderstood,  and  I  hope  I  have 
used  them  to  no  less  purpose  on  this  than  on  former  occasions; 
but  among  the  misunderstandings  I  would  prevent  if  I  could  is 
that  which  would  sum  up  the  matter  of  my  paper  as  a  defense  of 
individualism  against  collectivism.  Such  an  issue  could  only  be 
meaningful  for  one  to  whom  the  collectivity  was  denied  some  sort 
of  individuality  which  the  '  individual '  enjoys.  But  I  have  tried 
to  show  that  I  could  conceive  no  such  difference  between  the 
mind  of  the  part  and  the  mind  of  the  group.  The  group  mind 
may  be  loved  with  the  human  love  that  individuates  as  well 
as  can  the  soul  of  a  fellowman,  and  no  doubt  one  may  love  one's 
country  as  a  mistress.  But  the  diff"erence  between  the  love  of 
equals  and  the  love  of  constituents  is  plain.  The  latter  sort  of 
love  can  last  only  so  long  as  its  object  endures,  and  as  long  as  it 
lasts  its  sacrifices  are  incurable ;  for  in  a  world  that  has  conquered 
strife  there  would  no  longer  be  that  contradiction  between  the 
will  of  a  group  and  the  will  of  its  parts  which  alone  makes  the 
group  entity  meaningful.  Groups  bound  in  mutual  respect  of 
each  other  and  studying  to  preserve  their  parts  irreplaceable 
have  no  minds;  the  entity  born  of  struggle  and  calling  for  sacrifice 
has  simply  disappeared;  where  we  had  a  group  mind,  we  have 


No.  3.1  LOVE  AND  LOYALTY.  465 

now  but  an  aggregate  of  minds,  'a  fluid  complex  of  relations 
among  individuals.'  But  the  love  of  equals  can  push  on  toward 
the  ideal  without  destroying  the  very  object  of  its  devotion;  it 
can  go  on  searching  the  core  of  concord  in  the  stupid  appearance 
of  discord  until  love  has  found  a  way  to  make  loyalty  a  lost  virtue 
and  a  group  mind  a  thing  that  is  no  more. 

E.  A.  Singer. 

U.  OF  Pennsylvania. 


JOSIAH   ROYCE  AS  A  TEACHER 

IF  duration  of  discipleship  is  any  criterion,  my  eight  years  as  a 
student  under  Professor  Royce  should  entitle  me  to  speak 
of  him  as  a  teacher.  For  three  years  as  an  undergraduate  and 
five  as  a  graduate  student  I  enjoyed  the  privilege  of  his  instruc- 
tion face  to  face.  Outside  the  classroom  I  have  now  been  learning 
from  him  the  meaning  of  my  own  thoughts  for  just  thirty  years, 
as  I  first  began  to  read  his  writings  in  1885. 

I. 

I  think  it  was  in  1886  that  I  first  tasted  the  full  flavor  of  his 
teaching  when  in  a  thesis  on  the  ethical  doctrines  of  his  first  book 
I  pointed  out  with  proud  distinctness  thirteen  ways  in  which  he 
had  strayed  from  the  path  of  truth  and  ventured  to  differ  from 
me.  I  left  Professor  Royce's  ethical  philosophy  such  a  hopeless 
wreck  that  I  was  apologetic  in  presenting  to  him  an  attack  so  full 
of  *f rightfulness.' 

Then  it  was  that  I  learned  of  him  my  first  memorable  lesson, — 
how  to  take  criticism — even  the  most  unintelligent  criticism. 
He  seemed  really  delighted  with  my  onslaught.  Indeed  I  do 
not  remember  that  he  ever  showed  as  much  genuine  pleasure  in 
the  reception  of  any  of  my  subsequent  weighty  writings  as  he 
did  when  I  fired  at  him  this  broadside  of  heavy  metal — quite 
irresistible  and  crushing  as  I  viewed  it  from  the  gunner's  stand- 
point. My  later  and  milder  effusions  never  seemed  to  please 
him  so  much. 

This  behavior  of  his  took  me  completely  aback.  Like  other 
undergraduates  of  average  pugnacity  I  hated  and  repelled 
criticism  because  it  was  a  dangerous  attack  on  the  strongholds 
of  entrenched  truth  behind  which  I  carried  on  the  daily  business 
of  life.  That  there  existed  on  the  earth  a  being  who  could 
tolerate — yes,  actually  welcome  criticism,  contradiction,  and 
attack,  was  to  me  a  brand  new  fact,  one  that  made  me  blink 
and  stagger  at  first,  but  later  opened  my  eyes  to  a  new  and  most 

466 


JOSIAH  ROYCE  AS  A    TEACHER.  467 

comfortable  reality.  For  it  gradually  dawned  on  me  that 
Professor  Royce  understood  my  objections,  received  and  felt 
them  acutely,  and  yet,  mirabile  dictu,  was  not  demolished  by 
them. 

Might  it  not  be,  then,  that  I  too  could  open  my  ears  to  those 
who  had  the  temerity  to  differ  from  me,  might  receive  their  bit  of 
sincere  experience  and  use  it  without  being  upset  by  it?  That 
first  lesson  from  Professor  Royce  made  an  epoch  in  my  life.  I 
still  believe  that  it  contained  one  of  the  most  important  truths 
that  I  or  any  other  belligerent  thinker  can  learn.  For  he 
shocked  me  into  perceiving  that  a  man  could  really  welcome  a 
difference  of  opinion  not  merely  with  the  sort  of  politness  that 
prize  fighters  display  when  they  shake  hands  before  the  first 
round, — not  merely  with  diplomatic  suavity  or  cynical  tolerance, 
— but  as  a  precious  gift. 

I  saw  that  Professor  Royce  really  understood  all  that  I  meant 
when  I  attacked  him,  really  took  it  in.  Indeed  he  could  restate 
it  better  than  I.  This  had  never  happened  to  me  before.  When 
I  differed  in  argument  with  Palmer,  Santayana,  or  James,  I  never 
felt  that  they  understood  my  point.  They  could  answer  me, 
refute  me,  perhaps;  but  they  never  came  into  my  entrenched 
camp  and  fired  my  own  guns  for  me  with  an  aim  better  than  my 
own. 

This,  then,  is,  I  think,  one  of  Professor  Royce's  chief  charac-' 
teristics  as  a  teacher.  He  can  understand,  welcome,  and  incor- 
porate better  than  any  man  I  have  known  a  view  which  attacks 
his  own.  Thus  in  my  case  at  least  he  prepared  the  way  for  my 
conversion.  In  the  course  of  a  few  months  I  came  to  see  that 
the  thirteen  points  of  error  which  I  discovered  in  Professor 
Royce's  ethics  were  in  fact  thirteen  points  of  misunderstanding 
or  of  fractional  understanding.  As  soon  as  I  followed  his 
method  and  succeeded  in  understanding  the  doctrines  I  had  been 
attacking  I  came  to  see  that  the  remaining  point  of  difference 
concerned  chiefly  the  forms  of  wording.  I  still  thought  that  some 
of  his  ethical  doctrines  were  unwisely  expressed  or  were  weighted 
too  heavily  on  one  side;  but  his  openness  to  see  my  points  made 
it  necessary,  in  common  decency,  that  I  should  enlarge  my  mind 


468  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

sufficiently  to  take  in  his.  In  the  end  it  was  conversion  to  me 
in  the  sense  of  new  experience.  Rewording  was  not  enough. 
I  had  to  stretch  my  mind  to  get  in  the  new  ideas.  But  I  got  the 
courage  to  attempt  this  ever  painful  process  from  the  contagion 
of  Royce's  example.  He  showed  me  by  example  as  well  as  by 
precept  how  to  use  one's  mind, — how  to  be  genuinely  converted 
without  giving  up  the  substance  of  the  belief  which  had  made 
one  previously  resist  conversion.  That  example  has  always 
been  one  of  the  richest  fruits  of  his  teaching  to  me  and  I  believe 
to  many  others. 

II. 

A  second  and  contrasting  feature  of  his  teaching  comes  out 
clearly  in  his  seminaries — namely  his  searching  and  rigid  criticism 
of  views  that  betray  culpable  ignorance  of  the  history  of  phi- 
losophy. Professor  Royce  assumes  that  by  the  time  a  student 
is  fit  for  seminary  work  he  has  no  right  to  be  innocently  ignorant 
of  the  history  of  thought.  He  must  have  some  awareness  of  what 
he  does  not  know.  A  man  is  bound  to  know  something,  he  holds, 
of  the  main  historic  outlines  of  thought  about  the  subject  he 
deals  with.  The  sharpest  and  most  destructive  criticism  that 
I  have  ever  heard  from  him  was  designed  to  impress  it  upon  the 
advanced  student  that  philosophy  means  scholarship  as  well 
as  speculation.  The  student's  well-known  tendency  to  launch 
forth  on  the  tide  of  his  own  unaided  meditations,  profoundly 
ignorant  of  what  Aristotle,  Spinoza  or  Kant  has  had  to  say  about 
it — is  firmly  checked  by  Royce  in  the  interests  of  good  scholar- 
ship. 

No  other  teacher  of  philosophy  in  my  time  has  carried  into 
his  seminaries  so  full  and  living  a  consciousness  of  the  historic 
stream  of  philosophic  thought.  No  one  else  gave  me  so  salutary! 
a  sense  of  how  small  a  chip  was  sufficient  to  float  my  entire  stock  ,  ^ 
of  ideas  along  that  majestic  current.  No  one  else  gives  us  such 
shocks  of  disillusionment,  when  we  hear  from  him  and  later 
read  up  sadly  in  the  originals  how  many  times  our  own  fresh 
thoughts  have  been  stated  and  better  stated  before,  and  how 
completely — perhaps — our  views  have  been  refuted. 


No.  3.]  JOSIAH  ROYCE  AS  A    TEACHER.  469 

III. 

It  is  further  characteristic  of  him  to  assist  in  discussion  the 
weak  and  wavering  views  of  the  muddleheaded  or  timid  student 
and  to  direct  his  most  searching  questions  at  the  trenchant  and 
self-confident  speaker.  In  seminaries  that  I  attended  a  man 
would  deposit  before  us  some  shapeless  and  incoherent  views. 
Royce  would  melt  them  down  in  an  instant  and  reissue  them 
to  the  astonished  student,  new  minted,  clean  and  finished.  Then 
with  almost  miraculous  innocence  and  sincerity  he  would  in- 
quire, "Would  you  accept  that  as  a  fair  account  of  your  main 
thesis?"  Would  I  accept  it!  Will  a  man  kindly  allow  his  Alma 
Mater  to  double  his  salary?  Will  a  man  be  so  kind  as  to  accept 
the  Nobel  Prize?     The  chances  are  that  he  will. 

One  year  we  had  informal  meetings  of  the  whole  department  of 
philosophy  with  the  seminary  students.  I  was  fencing  one 
evening  with  Santayana  and  getting  the  worst  of  it.  Stroke  by 
stroke  he  drove  me  to  the  wall  till  finally  he  was  just  about  to 
impale  me  with  the  thrust  of  an  unanswerable  question,  when 
swiftly  Royce  cut  in  and  answered  the  unanswerable  for  me.  I 
had  an  instant  to  breathe  and  gather  my  wits.  I  recognized 
(was  it  not  a  strange  coincidence?)  that  Royce's  parry  to  San- 
tayana was  the  very  one  I  was  about  to  make,  and  following 
wisely  this  safe  line  of  defence  I  escaped  with  my  skin. 

But  this  rescue  was  made  not  merely  because  of  any  desire  to 
keep  up  the  game.  It  was  because  he  thought  the  truth  was 
suffering  from  a  poor  defence.  That  provoked  his  instant  aid. 
If  on  the  other  hand  error  was  making  a  particularly  showy  and 
effective  presentation  through  the  mouth  of  some  'tough- 
minded  '  student,  Royce's  criticism  took  on  edge  and  was  pushed 
home  to  the  very  end.  The  wind  was  tempered  to  the  shorn 
lamb  but  not  to  the  seasoned  and  heavy  fleeced  sheep. 

IV. 
I  regard  it  as  one  of  Professor  Royce's  greatest  achievements 
as  a  teacher  that  he  is  seldom  if  ever  entrapped  by  the  snares  of 
verbalism.     We  all  know  the  human  tendency  to  become  de- 
votedly attached  to  certain  words  and  to  insist  that  the  philo- 


470  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

sophic  heavens  shall  revolve  around  them.  There  is  a  corre- 
sponding tendency  to  blacklist  certain  phrases  and  to  regard  as 
anathema  all  that  they  seem  to  symbolize. 

In  formal  logic  Royce  follows  the  tradition  of  attaching  one  and 
only  one  precisely  defined  meaning  to  a  single  word.  But  in 
the  other  fields  of  philosophy  he  maintains  our  ordinary  human 
right  to  the  use  of  synonyms.  He  will  play  the  game  with  any 
implements  at  hand.  If  bat  and  ball  are  inaccessible  he  is  never 
too  proud  to  convey  his  soul  by  means  of  a  turnip  and  a  stick 
of  kindling  wood.  He  is  hospitable  to  many  sets  of  symbols, 
and  able  to  pursue  and  to  catch  one's  thought  no  matter  how  dis- 
guised in  a  pseudo-scientific  mask  or  a  heavy  German  wig. 

Students  often  do  not  like  this.  They  are  often  conservative 
and  rigid  about  terms  and  when  invited  to  play  three  old  cat 
with  a  broomstick  and  a  tennis  ball  will  often  turn  sulky  and 
stay  out.  But  I  am  especially  glad  to  have  seen  Royce  teach 
by  example  that  we  should  be  flexible  and  at  ease  with  many  sets 
of  terms — always  provided  that  by  profuse  exemplification  we 
keep  ourselves  vividly  mindful  of  the  concrete  experiences  which 
various  alternative  phrases  can  body  forth.  I  think  it  is  due  to 
his  wide  historic  study  of  philosophy  that  he  is  so  tolerant  of 
many  usages  in  philosophic  terminology.  He  knows  so  many  pet 
words  of  this  or  that  philosopher  that  he  is  not  inclined  to  hitch 
all  his  affections  to  one  pet  tool. 

When  students  ask  him  questions  he  does  not  discourage  them 
by  always  having  the  answer  on  the  tip  of  his  tongue.  He  often 
has  to  think  before  answering, — most  rare  and  precious  trait  in  a 
teacher! — and  sometimes  he  takes  a  question  under  advisement 
and  hands  down  his  decision  at  a  later  meeting.  That  encourages 
us.  Questions  taken  so  seriously  as  that  are  apt  to  be  asked  with 
more  seriousness  and  pertinacity  in  the  future. 

His  power  to  answer  questions  is,  I  think,  one  of  his  best  traits 
as  a  teacher.  I  heard  him  one  winter  deliver  a  course  of  lectures 
on  Child  Psychology  to  public  and  private  school  teachers.  At 
the  end  of  each  lecture  an  hour  or  more  was  taken  up  with  the 
asking  and  answering  of  questions,  and  I  heard  many  teachers 
say  that  they  never  knew  questions  so  brilliantly  and  usefully 


No.  3.]  JOSIAH  ROYCE  AS  A    TEACHER.  47 1 

answered.     For  he  saw  all  round  the  question  and  often  answered 
what  it  meant  as  well  as  what  it  said. 

V. 

Once  in  his  seminary,  a  student  read  a  paper  in  which  the 
ultimate  reasons  for  his  beliefs  were  as  he  said  hidden  behind 
the  veil.  One  followed  him  step  by  step  along  his  approaches  to 
the  problem  of  Causality,  Individuality,  or  Time.  But  each 
time  that  we  came  close  to  the  main  issues  of  his  belief  he  ex- 
plained to  us  that  here  we  approached  the  edges,  not  indeed  of 
Spencer's  Unknowable,  but  of  a  lineal  descendant  of  that  august 
Phantom.  The  student  was  like  Spencer  in  knowing  a  great  deal 
about  the  Unknowable.  He  told  us  precisely  what  we  could  find 
behind  the  veil  but  for  its  unhappy  opacity.  He  bemoaned  his 
fate  like  the  aphasic  patient  who  when  asked,  "Can  you  say  the 
word  horse?"  answered,  "O  doctor,  horse  is  one  of  the  words  that 
I  never  can  get  across  me  lips." 

At  last  he  finished.  We  were  restless  and  puzzled — not  know- 
ing how  to  strike  into  the  discussion.  But  Royce  showed  just 
the  suspicion  of  a  twinkle  as  he  pulled  himself  upright  by  the 
arms  of  his  chair  and  asked  the  reader  briskly,  "Now,  Mr.  Blank, 
won't  you  draw  aside  that  veil  and  tell  us  what's  behind  it?  " 

The  quality  that  made  him  say  this  is  one  of  the  unforgettable 
things  about  his  teaching.  He  is  always  endeavoring  to  draw 
aside  veils  which  are  kept  in  place  by  the  strenuous  effort  of  him 
who  at  the  very  moment  declares  his  sad  inability  to  get  through 
them.  He  regards  it  as  characteristic  of  the  human  soul  to 
deny  the  ground  it  stands  on,  to  pronounce  loudly  its  own  dumb- 
ness and  to  explain  that  it  cannot  possibly  say  '  horse.'  Some- 
times by  painstaking  explanation,  sometimes  by  whimsicality 
and  shock,  he  is  always  endeavoring  to  make  us  more  aware  of 
what  we  are  about  when  we  think. 

VI. 

Professor  Royce's  chief  fault  as  a  teacher  is,  I  think,  his  failure 
to  invent  a  wholly  new  and  effective  way  to  teach  philosophy, 
thereby  superseding  all  the  current  methods,  such  as  lectures. 


472  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

seminaries,  and  theses.  Philosophy  like  most  college  teaching 
is  still  in  its  pedagogic  infancy.  It  still  awaits  its  pedagogic 
prophet  who  will  follow  the  bahnbrechender  example  of  Dickens* 
immortal  pedagogue  Squeers.  Nicholas  Nickleby  was  shocked 
by  the  large  motor  element  in  Squeers'  plan  of  teaching. 
"W-i-n-d-e-r,  Winder — now  go  clean  it." 

I  look  to  Royce  or  some  other  great  teacher  to  abolish  all  the 
present  methods  of  teaching  philosophy  in  favor  of  some  newly 
invented  plan  whereby  we  can  say  to  the  determinist,  "D-e- 
t-e-r-m-i-n-i-s-m :  now  go  do  it."  So  far  Professor  Royce  has  not 
found  time  to  work  out  the  details  of  this  method.  It  is  the 
only  serious  fault  that  I  can  find  with  his  teaching  which  I  will 
characterize  positively  as  I  end  this  paper  as  having  the 
maximum  of  scholarship  with  the  minimum  of  verbal  legerde- 
main, the  maximum  historic  consciousness  with  the  minimum  of 
slavery  to  the  past.  He  teaches  by  his  example  how  from  wounds 
and  sore  defeat  to  make  one's  battle-stay  in  the  world  of  thought. 
He  makes  discussions  interesting  by  helping  the  lame  ducks  and 
cooling  the  swelled  heads.  Above  all  he  develops  the  student's 
own  thought  by  catching  him  in  the  act  of  asserting  what  he 
denies,  of  performing  what  he  ignores,  and  of  possessing  what  he 
supposes  himself  to  lack. 

Richard  C.  Cabot. 

Boston,  Mass. 


ROYCE'S  IDEALISM  AS  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EDUCATION. 

IS  some  apology  necessary  for  discussing  philosophy  in  relation 
to  education?  He  who  thinks  there  is  no  vital  connection 
between  them  has  an  inadequate  idea  of  each,  for  philosophy 
should  not  be  detached  from  practical  interests,  and  a  great 
practical  interest  like  education  should  not  go  on  its  way  em- 
pirically without  the  guidance  of  reflection.  Philosophy  pro- 
vides the  general  theory  of  life  which  education  should  seek  to 
realize.  Their  problems  are  the  same,  viewed  theoretically  by 
philosophy  and  handled  practically  by  education.  It  is  the 
bane  of  philosophy  to  regard  it  as  something  by  itself,  and,  as 
Herbart  showed,  whether  a  philosophy  works  well  in  education 
is  one  test  of  its  truth.  We  might  recall  that  it  was  educational 
questions  raised  by  the  Sophists  which  started  western  specu- 
lation about  man  on  its  course.  The  world's  greatest  philoso- 
phers have  been  teachers,  such  as  Socrates,  Plato,  Aristotle,  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas,  Kant.  He  whom  we  honor  today  is  a  phi- 
losopher and  teacher. 

Education  is  a  human  interest  large  enough  to  have  a  phi- 
losophy. There  is  a  philosophy  of  the  state,  of  religion,  of  art, 
of  truth,  of  morality.  Education  involves  the  use  of  all  of  these 
related  interests  in  perfecting  human  life ;  then  why  not  a  philos- 
ophy of  education?  In  fact,  any  philosophy  worthy  the  name 
forms  the  background  of  educational  practice.  As  Dewey  says : 
"Education  is  such  an  important  interest  of  life  that  in  any  case 
we  should  expect  to  find  a  philosophy  of  education,  just  as  there 
is  a  philosophy  of  art  and  religion.  We  should  expect,  that  is, 
such  a  treatment  of  the  subject  as  would  show  that  the  nature 
of  existence  renders  education  an  integral  and  indispensable 
function  of  life."^ 

But  the  philosophers  of  our  day  have  not  supplied  us  with  a 
general  theory  of  education,  inwrought  in  their  philosophical 

lArt.  "Philosophy  of  Education"  in  Cyclopedia  of  Education,  Vol.  IV,  N.  Y., 
1913- 

473 


474  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

thinking,  as  did  Plato,  Aristotle,  and  Herbart  in  their  day.  And 
the  educators  have  seemed  not  to  need  it.  Philosophers  have 
viewed  education  as  too  practical  a  matter  to  engage  their  at- 
tention, and  educators  have  regarded  philosophy  as  too  theoretical 
for  them.  Both  philosophy  and  education  have  thereby  suffered ; 
philosophy  remaining  aloof  from  one  great  interest  of  life  and 
education  proceeding  unscrutinized. 

What  is  education?  It  is  the  endeavor  society  makes  con- 
sciously to  realize  its  ideals,  such  as  health,  happiness,  social 
effectiveness,  and  the  public  weal.  Narrowly,  this  is  done 
through  the  school  with  the  young ;  broadly,  by  all  the  agencies 
of  life  with  young  and  old  alike.  Education  needs  to  know  its 
ideals,  which  are  the  ideals  of  the  complete  life  in  a  properly 
ordered  society,  and  it  is  a  part  of  the  business  of  philosophy  to 
formulate  and  inter-relate  those  ideals. 

What  then  is  a  philosophy  of  education?  It  is  a  program  of 
human  achievement.  It  is  a  systematic  setting  forth  of  the 
essential  ideals  of  individual  and  social  human  living.  It  is  the 
theory  of  the  proper  relations  between  the  more  permanent 
elements  of  the  total  educational  situation.  It  is  an  interpre- 
tation of  education  in  terms  of  the  whole  of  experience.  With 
those  philosophers  who  have  more  than  the  process  of  social 
experience  in  mind,  it  may  even  be  an  interpretation  of  education 
in  terms  of  the  ultimate  world-ground.  So  it  was  to  Plato.  So 
it  would  probably  be  to  Royce.  I  say  'probably  be,'  because 
Royce  has  not  himself  given  us  a  philosophy  of  education.  In 
1 89 1  in  two  articles  in  the  first  volume  of  the  Educational  Review 
on,  "Is  There  a  Science  of  Education?",  Royce  answered  in  the 
negative;  and  in  1903  in  his  Outlines  of  Psychology,  which  appears 
in  a  "Teachers'  Professional  Library,"  he  defined  some  of  the 
problems  of  teaching  in  psychological  terms.  It  is  to  be  hoped 
that  Professor  Royce  may  similarly  relate  his  philosophy  to 
education.  The  term  'education'  does  not  appear  in  the  index 
to  the  two  volumes  of  The  World  and  The  Individual. 

There  are  two  ways  of  arriving  at  a  philosophy  of  education; 
one,  from  an  accepted  ready-made  philosophy  to  educational 
theory  by  deduction,  a  rather  external  mode  of  procedure;  the 


No.  3.]  ROYCE'S  IDEALISM.  475 

other,  by  an  analysis  of  the  educational  situation  as  a  part  of 
human  experience  to  determine  its  essential  features  in  relation 
to  the  goal  of  living.  The  latter  method  is  more  in  keeping  with 
our  times ;  the  psychology  of  education  has  made  the  same  shift ; 
but  the  former  is  perforce  the  only  method  available  under  the 
title  of  this  paper.  My  task  is  to  interpret  education  in  terms  of 
Royce's  Idealism  as  Royce  himself  might  do. 

There  is  no  occasion,  I  think,  for  summarizing  Royce's  system 
of  Idealism.  It  is  expressed  particularly  in  The  World  and 
the  Individual,^  covering  the  problems  of  ontology,  epistemology, 
and  cosmology.  The  terms  most  used  by  Royce  are  Being, 
Knowledge,  Nature,  Man,  and  the  Moral  Order.  The  motives 
animating  Royce's  idealism  seem  to  be  the  three  following: 
(i)  No  radical  reconstruction  of  the  actual,  as  illustrated  by 
Fichte,  but  the  conservative  interpretation  of  the  actual  in  large 
terms  of  rationality  by  means  of  dialectic,  as  illustrated  by  Hegel, 
though  Royce's  interpretation  of  experience,  will,  and  nature 
differ  from  Hegel's.  (2)  No  concession  to  naturalistic  or  realistic 
types  of  philosophy,  apotheosizing  scientific  method  and  con- 
clusions, but,  by  supplementing  the  category  of  'Description' 
with  that  of  'Appreciation,'  the  preservation  of  the  interests  of 
morality  and  religion.  (This  motive  provokes  the  new  realists 
but  they  have  yet  to  launch  a  defensible  interpretation  of  re- 
ligion.) (3)  As  opposed  to  dualism  and  pluralism,  the  unity  of 
the  world.  "The  whole  of  experience, "  which  Royce  presents  is 
not  an  aggregate  of  interrelated  centres  of  finite  experience  but 
an  integrated  total  unity,  embracing  time,  in  which  finite  centers 
have  their  place. 

What  does  Royce's  system  of  idealism,  so  motivated,  yield  in 
the  way  of  a  philosophy  of  education?  The  large  field  of  theory 
provided  by  this  world-view,  in  which  education  works,  might  be 
briefly  stated  in  this  wise:  the  subject  of  education,  the  educand, 
is  man;  he  is  really  a  citizen  of  an  ideal  world,  but  he  doesn't 
realize  it;  his  naturalistic  beginnings  are  consistent  with  his 
ethical  goal;  his  progress  in  development  is  a  process  of  deepen- 
ing his  consciousness;  he  is  both  a  self  and  a  socius;  his  fellows 

1  Two  vols.,  N.  Y.,  1900-1901. 


476  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

are  not  only  other  beings  like  himself,  but  possibly  animal  types 
as  well;  even  nature  is  a  larger  self  between  him  and  his  goal; 
the  mal-adjustments  between  selves  which  we  call  evil  are  the 
conditions  of  winning  the  highest  good  through  their  conquest; 
in  this  struggle  with  evil  man  has  freedom  through  union  with 
the  whole;  as  a  unique  expression  of  the  infinite  will,  he  has 
immortality;  the  met-empirical  nature  of  his  knowledge,  the 
inclusive  character  of  his  time-span,  though  short,  his  victory 
over  evil,  his  essential  selfhood  as  ethical,  all  betoken  already 
the  infinity  of  his  nature;  his  progress  is  unending;  his  goal  is  the 
Organic  Being,  comprehending  both  the  static  and  dynamic 
viewpoints,  a  Life  of  lives,  a  Self  of  selves,  an  Individual  of 
individuals.  Reality  is  a  self -representative  experience,  sentient 
and  rational,  embodying  ideas,  fulfilling  purposes. 
I  One  perceives  the  similarity  of  this  general  theory  to  be  realized 
I  by  educational  practice  to  that  of  Froebel,  especially  in  the  pri- 
mary place  assigned  the  feelings  and  will  in  contrast  with  the 
descriptive  r61e  of  ideas. 

The  main  problems  of  education  have  a  possible  solution  in 
accordance  with  these  principles.  What  is  the  real  nature  of 
education?  The  realization  of  self-hood.  What  is  the  real  aim 
of  education?  The  union  in  acting  and  thinking  of  the  finite 
with  the  infinite.  What  is  the  means  of  education,  the  curricu- 
lum? The  natural  and  social  order,  the  sciences  describing  the 
regularities  in  the  activities  of  the  Self  of  nature,  the  humanities 
acquainting  us  with  the  Self  of  man.  What  is  the  right  attitude 
toward  the  body  in  physical  education?  As  a  part  of  the  material 
world  really  expressive  of  purpose,  it  requires  cultivation  in  the 
interest  of  the  whole  man  it  serves.  What  is  moral  education? 
It  is,  ultimately,  bringing  the  will  of  man  into  harmony  with  his 
own  best  self,  which  is  the  absolute  will  for  him.  What  is  aes- 
thetic education?  It  is  bringing  man  into  appreciation  of  the 
perfect,  which  characterizes  the  whole  of  experience  as  well  as 
certain  selected  portions  of  it.  What  is  social  education?  It  is 
bringing  the  individual  into  the  sense  of  the  unity  and  mutuality 
of  the  different  centers  of  experience.  What  is  intellectual 
education?     It  is  the  acquaintance  of  man  with  those  mechanisms 


No.  3.]  ROYCE'S  IDEALISM.  477 

and  necessities  of  the  world  which  enable  him  to  survive,  to  keep 
his  engagements,  and  to  progress.  What  is  vocational  edu- 
cation? It  is  the  equipment  of  life  with  skill  akin  to  that  dis- 
played in  the  activity  of  the  world-will.  What  is  religious  edu- 
cation? It  is  the  recognition  that  all  phases  of  education  are 
abstractions  until  they  find  their  unity  with  each  other  in 
conscious  relationship  to  the  life  of  the  All  or  God.  The  ultimate 
solvent  is  the  conscious  unity  of  all  reality.  There  is  an  educa- 
tion of  the  individual  and  of  the  race ;  each  is  a  process  of  realizing 
ideals  and  fulfilling  purposes  expressed  in  temporal  succession. 
There  is  an  education  of  the  body  and  of  the  mind;  each  is  a 
phase  of  the  one  process  of  making  man.  There  is  cultural  and 
vocational  education, — the  theoretical  and  practical  phases  of 
one  process  of  growth.  There  is  an  education  of  the  school  and 
an  education  of  life, — two  phases  of  the  one  process  of  living. 
There  is  an  education  under  authority  and  an  education  under 
freedom,  but  the  two  are  limiting  terms.  Each  individual, 
being  a  unique  embodiment  of  the  absolute  will,  has  priceless 
worth  and  requires  complete  development,  which  is  democracy 
in  education,  limited,  however,  by  the  conception  of  good  citizen- 
ship. Naturally  we  do  not  look  to  any  philosophy  for  details 
of  educational  procedure,  such  as,  how  to  correlate  the  work  of 
the  kindergarten  and  the  grades,  or  whether  we  should  have  a 
junior  high  school. 

In  sum,  Royce's  idealism  puts  infinite  and  partly  accessible 
meaning  into  educational  processes.  Man,  as  individual  and 
society,  is  cooperating,  now  blindly,  now  knowingly,  with  the 
absolute  purpose  in  bringing  himself  nearer  the  goal  of  his  being. 
This  process  is  evolutional  and  without  ceasing.  The  curriculum 
studied  is  really  the  activity  of  the  selves  of  man  and  nature. 
The  temporal,  the  knowing,  and  the  moral  elements  of  the 
process  suggest  the  presence  of  the  infinite  in  the  finite.  The 
ground  of  it  all  is  an  actualized  Ideal,  like  the  energia  of  Aristotle. 

How  shall  we  estimate  Royce's  idealism  as  a  basis  for  a  phi- 
losophy of  education?  There  is  no  time  for  comparing  its  con- 
clusions with  those  of  naturalism,  pragmatism,  and  realism. 
It  is  difficult  to  agree  on  a  standard  by  which  to  judge  its  truth. 


478  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

Its  Strong  and  weak  points  are  just  those  of  idealism  itself  as  a 
philosophy.  These  educational  interpretations  to  idealists  are 
doubtless  intellectually  convincing  as  well  as  emotionally  satis- 
fying and  morally  stimulating;  to  others,  they  leave  something 
to  be  desired.  The  educational  facts  themselves  are  not  dis- 
torted by  this  philosophy,  and  their  meaning  is  deepened  and 
extended.  An  inductive  study  of  the  educational  fact  as  part 
of  the  social  situation  in  order  to  find  an  educational  philosophy 
by  the  other  method  would  doubtless  lead  some  thinkers  to 
similar  conclusions.  For  myself,  I  feel  the  difficulty  of  rejecting 
it  without  implying  its  truth,  and  I  do  not  see  that  this  dialectic 
difficulty  is  met  by  voluntarily  refusing  to  be  caught  by  it. 
Royce  has  developed  his  idealistic  system  on  the  moral,  religious, 
scientific  and  epistemological  sides;  he  has  not  developed  it 
particularly  on  the  institutional,  aesthetic,  governmental  and 
vocational  sides.  And  these  latter  are  mooted  points  in  educa- 
tional theory  today.  One  can  not  be  sure  that  on  some  of  the 
questions  raised  above,  Royce  would  answer  as  I  have  done. 

It  is  also  proper  to  ask  whether  education  could  hope  to  realize 
the  idealistic  philosophy.  We  may  answer  yes;  for  some  at 
least,  if  this  philosophy  is  itself  the  culmination  of  educational 
training,  as  Plato  made  it.  The  rank  and  file  of  teachers,  in 
their  present  relative  lack  of  training,  are  like  the  prisoners  sitting 
chained  in  Plato's  cave  watching  the  shadows  reflected  by  a  fire 
at  its  opening  without  having  ever  once  seen  the  sun  of  light, 
truth,  and  being.  The  idealistic  philosophy  of  education  may 
be  accepted  or  rejected,  but,  if  accepted,  it  is  a  mighty  challenge 
to  society  to  re-constitute  its  education  more  in  accord  with  the 
high  ends  of  living. 

H.  H.  HORNE. 
New  York  University. 


THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS  AND  THE   ETHICS 
OF  ROYCE. 

A  Study  of  the  Bearing  of  Psychological  Concepts  upon 
Ethical  Theory. 

OINCE  any  scheme  of  ethics  implies  a  psychology,  any  original 
*^  movement  in  either  field  will  affect  the  other.  Whether  or 
not  a  psychology  recognizes  a  soul  may  make  comparatively 
little  difference  in  views  of  the  goal  of  behavior,  provided  some 
changeless  law  of  Karma  secures  that  moral  coherence  of  destiny 
which  is  one  of  the  soul's  functions.  But  theories  of  the  will, 
of  consent,  and  especially  of  the  ranking  of  various  impulses  and 
desires  under  some  '  ruling  faculty, '  may  mark  the  difference 
between  the  Stoic  and  the  Epicurean;  and  in  this  case  it  seems 
probable  that  the  differences  in  psychology  were  largely  due  to 
prior  differences  in  moral  conviction. 

At  present,  psychology  is  more  independent  of  ethics  than 
ethics  is  of  psychology.  But  if  psychology  declines  to  deal 
with  the  will  and  its  components,  ethics  will  be  obliged  to  develop 
this  part  of  psychology  for  itself.  Such  home-grown  psychol- 
ogies will  lack  fertility;  they  are  not  wrought  in  sufficient' de- 
tachment from  the  business  of  their  application.^  In  Royce's 
ethical  thought,  the  psychological  basis  was  neither  taken  over 
bodily  from  any  contemporary  doctrine  (though  the  influence 
of  James  is  marked)  nor  was  it  developed  as  an  independent 
science;  but  on  the  other  hand  it  was  not  developed  in  the  first 
place  as  an  element  in  an  ethical  system.  When  William  James 
distinguished  among  philosophies  those  that  'run  thick'  and  those 
that  'run  thin,'  he  included  the  philosophy  of  Royce  in  the  former 
class,  because  of  the  omnipresence  there  of  data  of  experience, 
largely  psychological.     For  Royce,  and  indeed  for  any  idealistic 

1  This  is  one  of  the  most  serious  defects  of  pragmatism  in  its  bearing  upon  the 
arts  of  thinking  and  education.  It  is  inclined  to  argue  backward  from  the  per- 
ceivable uses  of  ideas  to  the  ideas  themselves,  forgetting  the  vital  difference  between 
utiUty  and  fertility. 

479 


480  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

view  of  the  world,  there  can  be  no  metaphysics  without  psy- 
chology.^ The  ethical  ideas  of  the  Philosophy  of  Loyalty  thus 
owe  their  shape  in  large  measure  to  views  regarding  the  self,  its 
purposes  and  its  objects,  which  first  appeared  in  connection  with 
metaphysical  studies;  though  their  sources  He  far  behind  these 
in  an  uncommonly  broad  observation  of,  and  interest  in,  human 
experience  for  its  own  sake.  ^j^ 

Royce's  views  stand  in  interesting  relation  t^he  ethical  results 
of  certain  recent  developments  in  psychology.  It  is  the  pur- 
pose of  the  present  paper  to  trace  this  relation.  Already  the 
prominence  of  'behavior'  in  recent  psychology  is  governing  the 
statement  of  ethical  and  social  problems,  and  so,  to  a  certain 
extent,  their  solution.  McDougall's  Social  Psychology  may 
illustrate  this.  And  now  from  another  quarter,  the  strikingly 
original  psychological  work  of  Sigmund  Freud,  who  has  purposely 
remained  as  far  as  possible  naive  toward  current  psychological 
traditions,  is  laid  under  contribution.  In  Professor  E.  B.  Holt's 
book.  The  Freudian  Wish,^  the  interest  in  behavior  and  the 
analysis  of  Freud  are  brought  together;  and  both  are  employed, 
first  in  the  re-stating  of  ethical  questions  (which  is  all  that  new 
concepts,  strictly  speaking,  can  accomplish),  and  then  in  indi- 
cating certain  methods  of  solution. 

This  book  is  much  more  than  an  application  of  Freud's  ideas. 
It  offers  a  distinctly  novel  interpretation  of  the  'wish'  in  terms 
of  behavior  and  environment.  And  it  so  far  generalizes  the 
principles  of  Freud's  psychology,  that  it  amounts  to  a  gallant 
rescue  of  that  work  for  ethical  purposes  both  from  the  one-sided 
emphases  of  its  friends,  and  from  the  distortions  of  its  critics. 
It  is  refreshingly  fair  and  clear  sighted  in  recognizing  what  is 
significant  in  this  region  of  easy  and  voluminous  misunderstand- 
ing. The  ethical  application  itself  is  essentially  Holt's  work. 
It  is  true,  of  course,  that  the  psycho-analyst  in  his  therapy  must 
constantly  use  assumptions  about  where  moral  health  as  well 
as  mental  health  lies:  to  this  extent  Holt's  ideas  may  be  said  to 

*  Though  (as  his  Outlines  of  Psychology  may  witness)  it  is  quite  possible  to  treat 
psychology  while  keeping  metaphysical  issues  in  the  background.  See  page  viii 
of  the  Preface  of  this  book. 

*  New  York.  Henry  Holt  &  Co..  1915, 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  481 

be '  involved '  in  Freudian  practice.  But  it  is  Holt,  and  not  Freud, 
who  has  said  what  these  ideas  are,  and  what  they  mean  in  terms 
of  other  ethical  theories.  We  may  thus  fairly  regard  this  as  a 
pioneer  treatise,  one  with  a  weighty  thesis,  and  further,  one 
whose  vigor,  compactness,  and  clarity  throw  into  welcome  relief 
the  issues  about  which  discussion  will  naturally  center. 

One  looks  first  for  the  basis  of  the  distinction  between  good  and 
bad.  The  psycho-analyst^begins  with  a  condition  judged 
hygienically  bad,  namely -the.  mental  disorder.  If  this  disorder  is 
caused  by  a  repression  of  wishes,  then  repression  must  be  judged 
to  be  extrinsically  bad.  Professor  Holt  translates  this  clinical 
judgment  into  an  ethical  judgment:  repression  is  morally  bad. 
This  condemnation  of  repression  is  the  characteristic  common 
element  in  the  two  value-systems.  But  why  is  repression 
morally  bad?  This  judgment,  I  take  it,  does  not  depend,  through 
a  utilitarian  first  premiss,  upon  the  fact  that  repression  may  cause 
mental  disorder.  It  seems  to  depend  rather  upon  the  judgment 
that  the  condition  of  repression  is  one  already  out  of  normal 
relation  to  the  facts  of  the  world.  The  implied  first  premiss  is 
that  there  is  a  natural  relation  to  these  facts,  and  that  this 
natural  relation  is  "somehow  right"  (p.  151). 

This  natural  relation  is  one  of  a  personal  knowledge  of  facts, 
and  an  adjustment  to  them  through  this  knowledge  rather  than 
through  authority.  The  facts  will  '  drive  us  on  to  morals '  if  we 
expose  our  minds  to  them:  this  is  the  ethics  of  the  dust,  the 
ethics  from  below  upward.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  take  our 
relation  to  the  facts  through  social  authorities,  with  those  pro- 
hibitions and  tabus  which  prevent  acquaintance  and  personal 
knowledge,  we  deprive  ourselves  of  the  natural  reasons  for  moral 
behavior,  and  our  good  conduct,  such  as  it  is,  is  a  result  of  re- 
pression, not  of  wisdom.  This  is  the  ethics  'from  above'  (p. 
132),  sanctioned  by  the  prestige  of  the  censor,  and  hence  not 
sanctioned  by  the  inner  working  of  one's  own  experience  and 
discrimination.  "Thus  (through  their  official  bans)  it  comes 
to  pass  that  church  and  state  often  play  in  the  adult's  experience 


482  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

the  r&le  of  shortsighted  and  injudicious  parents.  ...  It  is  truth 
and  the  ever-progressive  discrimination  of  truth  which  alone 
conduce  to  moral  conduct"  (p.  130)- 

But  if  we  define  our  ethically  right  attitude  simply  as  one  which 
is  derived  from  a  knowledge  of  facts  and  their  consequences, 
our  theory  does  not  differ  essentially  from  that,  for  example,  of 
Herbert  Spencer  (especially  in  his  treatise  on  Education). 
Spencer  has  the  same  high  scorn  of  those  heteronomous  systems 
which  display,  perhaps  not  so  much  distrust  of  the  experiential 
sanctions  for  conduct,  as  an  incompetence  in  recognizing  them, 
an  imperfect  development  of  causal  reasoning.  But  Spencer 
would  have  us  hold  to  authority  in  some  form  or  other  until 
such  time  as  the  causal  consciousness  is  so  vivid  in  all  of  us  that 
we  can  surely  perceive  the  relations  between  our  ideals  and  our 
experiences.  How  far  Holt  would  accept  this  reservation;  how 
far,  on  the  contrary,  he  would  advise  the  bolder  attempt  which 
Arthur  Balfour  pictures,^  is  not  wholly  clear.  He  has  a  place 
for  authorities  that  tell  the  truth,  and  are  known  to  tell  the 
truth  (p.  114).  It  is  rather  the  lying  authority,  which  while 
exhorting  us  to  suppress  our  wishes  is  at  the  same  time  busied 
in  suppressing  the  facts  (p.  133),  that  is  to  be  condemned.  The 
impression  received  from  my  reading  is  that  Holt  judges  most 
human  authorities  to  be  of  the  latter  kind,  the  more  particularly 
when  they  allege  a  divine  sanction  (p.  130).  In  this  respect. 
Holt's  views  are  similar  to  those  of  many  other  modern  writers. 

The  distinctive  character  of  his  doctrine  must  be  found  in 
another  aspect  of  what  I  have  called  the  'natural  relation  to 
facts.'  For  there  are  really  two  sets  of  facts  which  the  moral 
life  has  to  consider,  the  facts  of  the  world  in  which  our  wishes 
are  to  be  worked  out,  and  the  facts  of  those  wishes  themselves, 
defined  as  specific  responses  (or  dispositions  to  respond)  of  our 
own  organisms  (p.  56).  Our  wishes  also  are  objectively  given. 
And  it  is  the  business  of  right  conduct  not  alone  to  know  the 
facts  of  the  environment,  but  so  to  know  them  that  we  can 
satisfy  our  wishes.  To  refrain  from  eating  mushrooms  because 
some  mushrooms  are  poisonous  is  not  ideal  conduct;  our  task  is 

1  Foundations  of  Belief,  pp.  204-208. 


No.  3-1  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  483 

to  know  which  are  edible,  and  (if  we  wish)  to  eat  them.  "  Right 
is  that  conduct,  attained  through  discrimination  of  the  facts, 
which  fulfils  all  of  a  man's  wishes  at  once,  suppressing  none." 

(p-  131)- 

There  are  thus  two  conditions  which  conduct  must  satisfy 
in  order  to  be  moral.  It  must  be  autonomous,_and  it  must 
fulfil  my  wishes.  It  must  be  free  in  the  sense  of  containing 
within  my  own  knowledge  all  the  reasons  for  my  conduct;  and 
it  must  be  free  in  the  further  sense  of  liberating  that  in  me  which 
craves  an  outlet.  The  condition  of  the  repressed  individual  is 
unfree ;  his  will  is  divided  against  itself ;  while  he  does  one  thing, 
there  is  a  secretly  rebellious  fraction  of  himself  which  longs  for 
something  else,  the  forbidden  fruit.  He  cherishes  the  delusion 
that  some  actions  are  'delightful,  yet  sinful';  and  so  far,  while 
rejecting  them,  he  remains  privately  attached  to  them,  hence 
in  bondage,  rebellious,  and  unmoral. 

The  way  of  moral  improvement  is  in  general  such  as  to  satisfy 
both  these  conditions  at  once;  for  it  is  by  a  process  of  'dis- 
crimination' that  one  finds  it  possible  to  satisfy  the  repressed 
wish.  For  example,  I  have  a  wish  for  social  amusement  and 
relaxation.  The  world  of  facts  provides  me  with  companions 
and  places  of  amusement.  But  the  censor  has  declared  that  the 
available  amusements,  theaters  perhaps,  are  bad;  and  I  am  in 
the  position  of  one  who  faces  a  field  of  poisonous  mushrooms: 
my  wishes  must  be  repressed.  What  is  needed  is  a  discrimina- 
tion ;  if  I  trust  my  own  eyes,  there  is  '  the  easily  perceivable  fact 
that  the  theater  is  partly  good  and  partly  bad';  and  with  this 
bit  of  wisdom  comes  the  release  of  my  rightful  desires. 

This  use  of  the  word  bad  as  applied  to  theaters,  etc.,  invites 
some  attention;  for  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  bad  theater  has 
the  power  of  satisfying  just  those  wishes  that  were  repressed. 
And  one  who  freely  indulges  in  bad  theaters  is  not  guilty  of  that 
fear  of  experience  which  marks  the  dominance  of  the  censor. 
If  we  condemn  this  indulgence  it  would  seem  at  first  sight  to  be 
on  some  as  yet  unacknowledged  ground.  Holt  himself  makes  an 
apparently  extra-scientific  appeal  to  'conscience'  (p.  120),  or 
to  "a  sound  prejudice  against  unbridled  frivolity,  and  a  normal 


484  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

shrinking  from  .  .  .  moral  contamination"  (p.  119).  But  the 
difficulty  is  only  apparent.  When  we  call  the  theater  bad  it  is 
only  because  in  satisfying  wish  A  it  in  some  way  thwarts  and 
represses  wish  B.  And  our  moral  problem  is,  not  simply  to  find 
objects  which  satisfy  our  wishes  severally;  but  to  find  among  a 
class  of  objects  X  which  satisfy  a  given  wish  A,  that  variety  X' 
which  thwarts  no  other  of  the  entire  magazine  of  wishes.  The 
postulate  which  this  type  of  ethical  theory  seems  bound  to  make 
is  that  such  objects  as  X'  exist.  The  edible  mushrooms  and  the 
good  theaters  exist,  and  I  can  reach  them. 

II. 

If  I  point  out  the  generous  optimism  of  this  postulate,  it  is 
not  for  the  sake  of  disputing  its  general  validity,  nor  that  of  the 
corresponding  dictum,  that  if  repressions  occur  in  this  world  of 
ours,  it  is  through  lack  of  knowledge  (p.  128).  It  is  for  the  sake 
of  enquiring  whether  all  repressions  are  alike  evil ;  whether  some 
may  not  be  both  inevitable  and  desirable. 

Is  Professor  Holt,  perhaps,  treading  dangerously  near  that 
view  from  which  Thorndike  has  recently  so  solemnly  warned  us, 
— the  view  that  original  human  nature,  as  a  bundle  of  wishes,  is 
always  right?  This  view,  says  Thorndike,  "by  being  attractive 
to  sentimentalists,  absolutist  philosophers,  and  believers  in  a 
distorted  and  fallacious  form  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  has 
been  of  great  influence  on  educational  theories."^  He  then 
points  out  the  presence  in  us  of  wishes  to  lie,  to  steal,  to  fight, 
to  torture,  to  run  away,  some  of  which  we  are  bound  not  merely 
to  repress  but  to  throttle,  because  they  are  appropriate  only 
to  an  archaic  environment.  We  have  to  'unlearn  a  large 
portion  of  our  natural  birthright.'  One  may  reasonably  chal- 
lenge these  categories,  denying  that  there  is  any  such  wish  in 
human  nature  as  a  wish  to  lie,  or  to  steal,  etc.  One  may  insist 
that  whatever  impulses  we  have  must  be  given  non-invidious 
names;  the  alleged  wish  to  lie  may  in  fact  be  a  wish  to  dramatize 
or  invent,  etc.  But  one  has  still  to  consider  the  broad  necessity 
of  discipline,  perhaps  even  of  excision,  in  the  making  of  the  moral 

•  Original  Nature  of  Man,  p.  270. 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  4^5 

person,  if  only  because  of  the  'side-stepping  of  civilization,'  or 
the  reversal  of  selective  methods  which  Huxley  has  pointed  out. 

If  we  are  to  require  in  our  morality  satisfaction  of  the  entire 
man — and  this  seems  to  me  a  just  requirement — we  must  invoke, 
I  believe,  another  principle, — that  of  vicarious  satisfaction  j 
among  our  wishes.  This  implies  (i)  that  our  various  'wishes'/ 
are  not  distinct  entities  (as  the  A  and  B  of  our  illustration),  but 
are  related  as  species  of  a  few  more  general  wishes,  perhaps  ul- 
timately of  one  most  general  wish ;  and  (2)  that  the  satisfaction 
of  the  more  general  wish  is  a  satisfaction  of  the  more  particular 
wish.  Instances  of  the  operation  of  this  principle  are  not  far 
to  seek.  The  love  of  fighting  or  of  opposition  is  one  which  may 
be  satisfied  in  many  ways  from  the  combat  by  fists  to  the  rivalry 
of  commercial  undertakings  or  of  political  parties ;  William  James 
has  familiarized  us  with  the  notion  of  a  'moral  equivalent'  of 
the  cruder  pugnacity.  Indeed,  society  may  be  said  to  be  largely 
engaged  in  the  work  of  discovering  moral  equivalents  for  our 
primitive  wishes ;  and  what  we  call  a  custom  or  an  institution 
seems  to  be  fairly  describable  as  a  social  finding  of  this  sort. 

It  is  because  our  wishes  exist  as  generals,  and  not  as  specific 
particulars  alone,  that  the  process  called  by  Freud  "sublimation"' 
is  possible.  This  process,  which  seems  to  me  to  be  the  most 
important  conception  for  ethical  purposes  that  Freud  has  out- 
lined (though  he  has  rather  assumed  it  than  developed  its  theory) , 
has  its  must  obvious  illustration  perhaps  in  the  aesthetic  equiva- 
lent, or  social  equivalent,  of  sexual  wishes;  the  general  wish 
under  which  these  specific  varieties  occur  may  be  variously 
described  as  the  wish  to  create,  or  the  wish  for  union,  etc.  In 
this  form  it  has  variously  appealed  to  social  observers,  as  to 
Miss  Jane  Addams,  to  Walter  Lippman  and  others.  But  its 
prevalence  and  fundamental  character  have  hardly  been  recog- 
nized. It  needs  to  be  related  to  the  process  of  the  transformation 
of  instincts  which  McDougall  has  touched  upon  and  which  all 
forms  of  education  make  use  of.  And  it  needs  to  be  understood 
in  terms  of  a  tendency  of  the  life  of  our  wishes  to  reach  suc- 
cessively more  general  interpretations,  and  to  become  subsumed 
ultimately  under   one   comprehensive   wish, — the  'will.'     With 


486  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

the  principle  of  vicarious  satisfaction  thus  defined,  it  is  conceiv- 
able that  comparatively  few  of  the  enumerable  wishes  of  a  man 
should  be  satisfied,  and  yet  the  man  be  satisfied.  The  inevitable 
lopping-ofif  that  comes  with  every  large  decision,  the  successive 
specializations  into  which  we  are  driven,  the  relinquishments 
necessary  if  only  through  lack  of  time,  the  hungers  left  by  poverty, 
by  social  pressure,  by  the  hundred  comparative  failures  to  one 
thorough  success  in  competitive  pursuits,  and  finally  that  uni- 
versal human  longing  due  to  the  actual  absence  from  the  world 
of  those  objects  upon  which  many  wishes  might  run  out  (the 
music  not  yet  written,  the  justice  not  yet  achieved,  not  to  speak 
of  the  lacking  edible  crows  or  wholly  good  wars,  even  if  there  be 
edible  mushrooms  and  wholly  good  theaters), — all  of  this  need 
no  more  make  man  unhappy  than  make  him  immoral,  if  our 
psychology  can  show  us  that  the  'soul,'  or  the  'will,'  or  the  total 
wish  of  man,  is  so  far  a  genuine  entity  that  a  checked  wish  need 
not  persist  as  a  repressed  and  rebellious  moment  of  subconscious 
demand,  but  find  its  way  upward  into  a  purpose  that  is  satisfied. 

If  this  could  be  shown,  and  I  believe  that  it  is  precisely  in  this 
direction  that  the  development  of  the  Freudian  school  is  tending,^ 
we  should  be  inclined  to  transfer  Holt's  moral  law  of  discrimin- 
ative self-expression  to  the  one  wish  or  purpose,  and  let  the 
particular  wishes  take  the  consequences.  The  difference  between 
the  two  methods  might  be  symbolized  in  some  such  fashion  as 
this: 

Assume  as  before  that  we  have  wish  A  which  can  be  satisfied 
by  X,  but  at  the  cost  of  repressing  wish  B;  and  we  have  wish  B 
which  can  be  satisfied  by  Y  (or  by  not-X),  but  at  the  cost  of 
repressing  A.  According  to  the  method  of  discrimination  we 
are  to  find  an  object  X'  which  will  satisfy  A  without  repressing 
B,  and  presumably  also  an  object  Y'  which  will  satisfy  B  without 
repressing  A.  According  to  the  method  of  vicarious  satis- 
faction we  have  to  recognize  the  more  general  wish,  M,  of  which 
A  and  B  are  special  forms,  and  then  to  find  the  object,  Z,  which 
will  satisfy  M. 

Under  this  latter  method,  A  and  B  would  not  be  satisfied  in 

■  See  below. 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  48? 

their  own  persons.  Neither  would  they  be  repressed  in  the 
sense  of  being  pressed  back  into  a  continued  life  of  protest.  It 
might  be  fair  to  say  that,  as  at  first  defined,  they  would  be  sup- 
pressed, as  a  necessary  first  stage  of  being  sublimated.^  All  growth 
must  involve  some  such  suppression  of  imperfectly  defined  wishes, 
until  we  discover  what,  as  a  major  purpose  of  our  existence,  we 
really  want.  Repression  must  be  judged  bad;  not  however 
because  of  the  local  rights  of  the  minor  wish,  but  rather  because 
it  implies  a  laxity  of  the  main  current  of  the  will,  a  Lot's-wife 
sort  of  irresolution,  such  as  a  brisker  seizure  in  thought  of  one's 
chosen  object  might  dissipate. 

I  am  not  posing  as  a  protagonist  of  self-mutilation  or  asceticism, 
though  I  believe  with  William  James  that  every  man  needs  his 
own  quota.     I  thoroughly  believe  in  the  principle  of  the  inte- 

I I  have  been  using  throughout  the  word  repression  for  Freud's  Verdrdngung. 
I  have  had  this  distinction  in  mind  in  doing  so.  For  Freud,  Verdrdngung  is  not 
the  general  condition  of  a  wish  which  is  denied  outlet,  but  rather  the  condition  of 
the  wish  which  while  outwardly  checked  is  inwardly  harbored.  He  recognizes  the 
normality  of  what  I  have  called  suppression  as  a  part  of  growth.  Thus,  in  his 
Clark  lectures,  he  speaks  as  follows:  "The  general  consequence  (of  psychoanalytic 
treatment)  is,  that  the  wish  is  consumed  during  the  work  by  the  correct  mental 
activity  of  those  better  tendencies  which  are  opposed  to  it.  The  repression  is 
supplanted  by  a  condemnation,  carried  through  with  the  best  means  at  one's 
disposal.  .  .  .  (At  the  origin  of  the  trouble)  the  individual  for  his  part  only  re- 
pressed the  useless  impulse,  because  at  that  time  he  was  himself  incompletely 
organized  and  weak;  in  his  present  maturity  and  strength  he  can  perhaps  conquer 
without  injury  to  himself  that  which  is  inimical  to  him."  So  far,  Freud  pictures 
the  rather  drastic  procedure  in  which  wish  B  actually  puts  wish  A  out  of  existence 
entirely,  suppressing  it,  instead  of  repressing  it;  and  without  substitution.  But, 
he  continues,  "the  extirpation  of  the  infantile  wishes  is  not  at  all  the  ideal  aim  of 
development.  The  neurotic  has  lost  by  his  repressions  many  sources  of  mental 
energy  whose  contingents  would  have  been  very  valuable  for  his  character-building 
and  life  activities.  We  know  a  far  more  purposive  process  of  development,  the  so- 
called  sublimation,  by  which  the  energy  of  infantile  wish-excitations  is  not  secluded, 
but  remains  capable  of  application,  while  for  the  particular  excitations,  instead  of 
becoming  useless,  a  higher,  eventually  no  longer  sexual  goal,  is  set  up."  It  is 
this  departure  from  the  'sexual  goal'  which  evidences  that  Freud  does  not  con- 
template the  satisfaction  of  wish  A  in  its  nominal  character.  To  be  sublimated,  it 
must,  in  this  character,  be  suppressed.  Freud  goes  on,  however,  to  indicate  that 
he  does  not  regard  sublimation  as  an  ideal  solution  of  the  problem  of  wishes.  It  is 
far  more  desirable,  he  suggests  in  a  figure,  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  mental 
energy  A  and  B  should  be  satisfied  in  their  particular  characters.  So  far,  he  sub- 
scribes to  Professor  Holt's  method,  but  he  does  not  identify  it  with  morality. 
(American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  XXI,  1910,  p.  217). 


488  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

gration  of  wishes,  as  Holt  has  stated  it,  as  a  necessary  element 
in  our  moral  ideal.  But  when  it  becomes  the  leading  element, 
so  that  what  I  have  called  local  rights  are  the  first  things  to  be 
considered,  it  seems  both  to  misrepresent  and  to  complicate  the 
moral  situation.  The  ideal  of  rounded  development  and  ac- 
tivity is  unquestionably  the  law  of  that  Nature  worshipped  both 
by  Greekdom  and  by  our  contemporary  physicalism.  But  the 
necessity  for  sacrificial  choice  is  not  provided  for;  and  it  cannot 
be  eliminated.  Nor  can  we  evade  the  fact  that  it  is  precisely 
such  choice  that  for  most  men  must  always  constitute  the  con- 
scious ethical  crux.  It  is  of  little  value  to  say  to  the  soldier 
called  upon  by  his  country  "So  discriminate  as  both  to  satisfy 
your  patriotic  wish  and  your  wishes  for  family  life,  social  amenity 
and  physical  comfort."  The  synthesis  is  indeed  better  than  the 
opposition,  and  wise  and  happy  is  he  who  can  find  it.  But  until 
what  we  call  adaptation  is  complete,  the  moral  law  must  deal 
with  disjunctive  judgments. 

III. 

There  is  one  phase  of  Holt's  psychology  to  which  this  view  of 
the  ethical  problem  seems  more  akin  than  the  Freudian  view. 
I  refer  to  his  theory  of  the  subconscious.  It  is  characteristic  of 
Holt's  view  of  mind  to  seek  what  is  usually  called  'inner'  in  a 
man's  dealings  with  his  environment.  He  prefers  not  to  trust  the 
'inside  information'  of  introspection.  Almost  we  might  say 
that  for  Holt,  the  man  is  his  purpose;^  and  his  purpose  is  to  be 
discerned  in  the  remote  and  inclusive  objects  of  his  action,  rather 
than  in  any  'thoughts'  which  he  might  be  able  to  serve  up,  on 
demand,  as  an  account  of  himself.  There  is  something  like  a 
reciprocal  relation  between  the  supposed  'inwardness'  of  a 
thought  or  motive  and  the  remoteness  of  the  object  with  which 
it  is  concerned:  the  more  inward  the  thought,  the  more  outward 
the  object.  The  thoughts  that  we  call  subconscious,  or  'secret' 
are  those  which  are  not  on  the  surface  of  our  minds  because  they 
are  relating  us  to  our  distant  rather  than  to  our  immediate  con- 
cerns: while  I  appear  to  others  and  to  myself  to  be  purchasing 

1  See  Holt,  p.  28. 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  489 

a  railway  ticket,  I  may  be  subconsciously  building  the  house  to 
which  this  momentary  act  is  accidentally  related  through  a 
thousand  links.  To  recognize  in  the  subconscious  thoughts  and 
wishes  those  which  reach  (or  try  to  reach)  farthest  outward,  seems 
to  me  not  only  illuminating  but  ventilating  to  this  conception 
so  commonly  shrouded  in  mystery. 

It  is  subconsciousness  in  this  sense,  a  subconscious  wisdom,  in 
fact,  which  relates  a  man  to  his  widest  horizon  and  constitutes 
his  ethical  and  religious  nature.  "  In  moral  conduct  the  stimulus 
has  receded  the  farthest,  and  such  conduct  is  behavior  toward 
the  more  universal  entities,  toward  truth,  honor,  virtue,  and  the 
like"  (p.  146). 

This  view  of  the  subconscious,  however,  and  of  the  ethical 
principle,  seems  to  me  hardly  consistent,  not  to  say  identical, 
either  with  Freud's  view  and  practice,  or  with  the  previously 
noted  principles  of  Holt.  If  a  repressed  wish  or  a  traumatic 
memory  is  subconscious,  in  Freud's  usage,  it  is  not  such  as  refers 
to  objective  facts  lying  beyond  the  usual  conscious  border;  nor 
is  it  such  as  can  be  directly  discerned  in  any  actual  behavior. 
Let  us  call  to  mind  Freud's  methods.  He  does  not,  indeed, 
rely  upon  direct  introspection  for  revealing  the  subconscious 
wishes.  He  states  his  problem  thus:  "To  find  out  something 
from  the  patient  that  the  doctor  did  not  know  and  the  patient 
himself  did  not  know."  He  learns  to  distrust  hypnosis  partly 
because  not  all  patients  can  be  hypnotized,  and  partly  because 
its  results  are  unreliable.  He  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  all 
memories  accessible  to  hypnotic  states  are  accessible  also  to 
normal  states;  if  certain  memories  fail  to  emerge  it  is  because 
of  a  resistance,  due  to  the  hypothetical  process  of  Verdrdngung 
or  repression.  Hence  his  methods  are  aimed  at  removing  the 
resistance  and  aiding  the  patient  to  recognize  and  confess  his 
own  wishes.  To  accomplish  this  he  does,  in  fact,  examine 
such  behavior,  and  also  such  experiences,  as  may  offer  a  clue  to 
the  lost  motive:  he  analyzes  dreams,  slips  of  the  tongue,  types  of 
imagination  and  association,  the  various  subtle  ways  in  which  we 
all  'betray  ourselves.'  "In  this  way,"  he  says,  "I  succeeded, 
without  hypnosis,  in  learning  from  the  patient  all  that  was 


490  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

necessary  for  a  construction  of  the  connection,"  etc.  What  I 
wish  to  point  out  is  that  Freud  depends  on  learning  the  patho- 
genic state  of  wish  or  memory  "from  the  patient" ;  his  most  satis- 
factory evidence  of  the  rightness  of  his  'psycho-analysis'  is 
that  the  patient  recognizes  its  rightness,  by  introspection.  Often- 
times this  recognition  amounts  to  a  new  item  of  self-consciousness 
on  the  patient's  part,  the  naming  of  an  unavowed  or  half-concealed 
motive.  Sometimes  it  is  like  recovering  the  thread  of  a  forgotten 
experience.  Often  it  bears  the  character  of  a  confession,  and  as 
Freud  has  somewhere  remarked,  has  some  of  the  values  and 
dangers  of  the  confessional.  But  always  it  is  an  appeal  to  more 
searching  introspection.  No  doubt  the  states  of  consciousness 
thus  revealed  are  represented  in  nervous  structure  by  subtle 
interplay  of  motor  settings  i'^  but  the  point  is,  that  Freud  neither 
seeks  nor  finds  them  there.  Freud  uses  behavior  as  an  aid  to 
introspection.  And  what  he  finds  is  a  radically  different  region 
of  subconsciousness  from  that  which  Holt  describes  in  the 
passages  referred  to. 

The  most  obvious  difference  is  that  the  subconscious  wish 
recovered  by  psycho-analysis  is  supposed  to  be  driven  into 
subconsciousness  by  the  censor,  whereas  the  subconscious  de- 
scribed by  Holt  is  as  likely  as  not  to  be  the  censor  itself  or  an 
element  thereof.  The  former  aspect  of  subconsciousness  is 
artificial,  a  consequence  of  repression;  the  latter  is  natural, 
entirely  free,  constantly  cooperating  with  conscious  thought 
instead  of  antagonizing  or  being  antagonized  by  it,  actively 
relating  our  conscious  deeds  to  their  widest  horizons.^  This 
latter  aspect  of  subconsciousness  may  fairly  be  identified  in  a 
special  way  with  the  man  himself: — As  a  man  thinketh  in  his 

1  Holt.  pp.  93.  94. 

"^  I  have  elsewhere  described  in  some  detail  the  difference  in  function  and  origin 
of  these  aspects  of  subconsciousness,  referring  to  them  as  the  cooperative  and  the 
critical  subconsciousness,  respectively.  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience, 
Appendix  I,  pp.  527-538.  The  point  of  this  distinction  is  well  expressed  in  a 
quatrain  of  John  B.  Tabb: 

'  Tis  not  what  I  am  fain  to  hide 

That  doth  in  deepest  darkness  dwell. 

But  what  my  tongue  hath  often  tried, 

Alas,  in  vain,  to  tell. 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  49I 

heart,  so  is  he.  Or  in  Holt's  terms, — As  a  man's  ultimate  horizon 
of  response  is,  so  is  he.  But  one  could  hardly  without  cynicism 
sweepingly  identify  the  subconsciousness  of  repression  with  the 
man  or  with  any  essential  part  of  him.  Yet  this  is  precisely 
what  the  Freudian  analysis  inclines  to  do;  and  it  is  here  that 
Holt's  psychology  might  act  as  a  salutary  corrective,  if  it  were 
consistently  applied.     Let  me  develop  this  suggestion  briefly. 

IV. 

The  first  appeal  of  the  Freudian  clinic,  and  of  the  Holtian 
ethic,  is  to  a  greater  candor,  and  a  new  self-scrutiny.  It  demands 
of  us  confidence  in  a  severer  but  friendlier  truth,  as  a  condition  of 
moral  growth.  If  it  confronts  us  with  something  like  a  universal 
threat  to  the  effect  that  "There  is  nothing  hidden  that  shall 
not  be  made  known" — since  in  spite  of  ourselves  our  expressions 
are  a  perpetual  self-betrayal  (Holt,  p.  36ff) — it  does  much  to 
make  endurable  the  admission  of  the  supposedly  inadmissible; 
for  it  shows  our  individual  fault  as  a  common  human  failing, 
holding  out  the  greeting  of  a  general  companionship  in  confession. 
The  goal  of  such  added  self-knowledge  and  self-avowal  can  be 
nothing  but  truth  and  health,  and  it  must  be  prized  accordingly. 
Psycho-analysis,  with  vastly  different  weapons  than  those  of 
Carlyle,  may  be  still  more  pervasively  effective  than  he  in  making 
us  aware  of  the  amount  of  sham  in  our  lives.  Dr.  James  J. 
Putnam  speaks  wholly  in  the  spirit  of  the  new  self-knowledge 
when  he  refers^  to  the  "hidden  motives  and  self-deceptions  which 
to  a  greater  or  less  degree  falsify  the  lives  of  every  man  and  every 
group  of  men,"  or  suggests  "the  discovery  that  some  apparently 
harmless  act,  classifiable  in  ordinary  parlance  as  a  wholly  justi- 
fiable form  of  tender  emotion,  is  in  reality  a  sign  that  (his) 
thoughts  are  tending  in  objectionable  directions."  In  so  far  as 
subtle  hypocrisies  and  double-motives  are  real  ingredients  of 
character,  nothing  can  be  more  welcome  than  a  usable  method  for 
detecting  them. 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  every  thought  or  motive 
which  is  under  suppression  is  such  a  real  ingredient  of  character, 

^Journal  of  Abnormal  Psychology,  Vol.  IX,  April-May,  1914,  pp.  37,  44. 


492  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

as  a  great  deal  of  the  Freudian  literature  suggests.  As  a  token 
of  the  error  we  may  point  out  a  characteristic  touch  in  the 
Freudian  interpretation  of  wit,  or  dream,  or  art,  or  even  of  moral 
effort,  which  it  would  be  too  strong  to  describe  as  cynical  or 
blighting,  and  yet  which  distinctly  verges  in  this  direction,  and 
from  which  Holt's  own  treatment  is  not  wholly  free  (as  p.  144), 
though  he  has  done  much  to  save  a  good  clinical  hypothesis  from 
developing  into  a  prevalent  clinical  suspicion.  It  should  be 
clear  that  solely  on  Freudian  principles^  there  is  a  radical  differ- 
ence between  the  repression  which  has  preceded  the  self-analysis 
and  avowal,  and  the  moral  effort  of  suppression  or  sublimation 
which  must  follow  it  if  the  discovered  trait  is  to  be  corrected. 
Any  moral  effort  whatever,  no  matter  how  free  from  self-decep- 
tion, necessarily  implies  the  continued  presence  in  us  of  impulses 
which  we  must  resist ;  it  implies  that  there  must  be  a  censor  with 
actual  work  to  do.  To  this  extent  there  will  be  double-minded- 
ness ;  but  there  is  all  the  difference  in  the  world  between  a  double- 
mindedness  which  is  growing  toward  unity,  and  a  double-minded- 
ness  which  is  being  cherished  and  smuggled  along  by  some  one 
of  those  many  devices  of  compromise  which  Holt  so  justly  con- 
demns, I  believe  that  most  of  the  actual  work  of  the  censor  in 
our  consciousness  is  of  the  former  sort  (or  of  a  mixed  sort,  with 
a  good  deal  of  the  former  ingredient  in  it) ;  and  that  a  call  to 
unrestricted  self-revelation  would  tend  to  undo  in  many  minds 
the  first  stages  of  moral  achievement.  I  believe  this  the  more 
because  in  many  cases,  and  perhaps  in  most  common  cases,  the 
most  effective  method  of  moral  improvement  is  not  the  Freudian 
method  of  scientific  self-analysis.  Something  is  to  be  said  for  a 
very  different  method,  which  without  accepting  Bergson's  oppo- 
sition between  analysis  and  intuition,  might  well  be  described 
in  terms  of  their  contrast.  Just  as  a  certain  element  in  the  cure 
of  diseased  viscera  is,  at  the  proper  stage  of  things,  to  forget  that 
you  have  any  viscera;  so  a  certain  element,  and  naturally  a  much 
larger  element,  in  the  cure  of  any  moral  disease  is  to  forget  that 
your  feelings  have  an  anatomy,  and  attend  to  wholeness  of  will 

*  Though  I  confess  that  Janet's  account  of  dealing  with  a  motive  we  wish  to 
overcome  seems  to  me  more  in  accord  with  ordinary  experience.  Journal  of 
Abnormal  Psychology,  vol.  IX,  No.  i,  pp.  28-9. 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  493 

and  action.  It  is  because  this  method  is  so  ancient,  so  well 
understood,  and  so  spontaneously  used,  that  many  an  honest 
person  confronted  with  an  equally  honest  Freudian  analysis  of 
his  subconscious  self,  would  be  likely  to  draw  from  it  quite  per- 
verse conclusions  about  the  state  of  his  soul.  I  do  not  undertake 
to  state  where  the  border  of  efficiency  between  the  two  methods 
is  to  be  drawn.  It  is  our  destiny  to  become  completely  self- 
knowing;  and  I  do  not  think  that  any  one  can  have  too  much  self- 
knowledge  or  self-analysis,  so  long  as  it  is  true  self-knowledge, 
proportionate.  But  so  long  as  the  method  of  health  by  intuition 
of  health  (if  I  may  so  describe  it)  has  any  important  role  to  play, 
it  is  a  serious  defect  of  any  general  scheme  of  moral  hygiene  not 
to  take  account  of  it.  And  the  defect  becomes  doubly  serious 
when,  as  appears  to  me  the  tendency  of  the  Holt-Freudian 
scheme,  the  natural  and  unconscious  use  of  this  intuitive  method 
— externally  so  similar  to  repression  and  censorship  in  the 
hypocritical  sense — is  confused  with  them.  It  is  not  true,  I 
repeat,  that  every  thought  and  motive  which  is  under  ban  and 
can  be  revealed  by  psycho-analysis  is  a  real  ingredient  of  char- 
acter. And  with  due  respect  to  Holt's  definitions,  this  method 
of  interpretation  is,  in  its  actual  working,  too  subjective. 

But  this  error,  I  believe,  is  rather  Freud's  than  Holt's;  for  in 
Holt's  own  principles  the  antidote  is  clearly  enough  stated. 
"The  inscrutable  'thought  behind'  the  actions  of  a  man,  which 
is  the  invisible  secret  of  those  actions,  is  another  myth"  (p.  85). 
Take  this  general  principle  of  behaviorism  together  with  the 
principle  that  the  characteristic  purposes  of  a  man  are  those 
which  reach  the  widest  horizon;  these  purposes  are  himself, 
provided  that  they  are  actively  engaged  in  integrating  the  rest  of 
his  purposes  into  their  own  system.  Take  it  with  the  comment 
that  the  hidden  thought  is  a  myth  not  because  it  is  non-existent; 
but  because  only  those  thoughts  have  significance  for  character 
which  achieve  expression.  We  shall  then  have,  I  believe,  a 
much  sounder  principle  of  judgment.  We  shall  be  judging  a 
man  by  that  which  he  is  ultimately  moving  toward,  rather  than 
by  what,  as  vestige  of  infantile  wish-definitions,  still  adheres  to 
him  from  a  past  which  of  his  own  growth  he  is  shuffling  off. 


494  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 


It  remains  true  that  the  objects  toward  which  a  man  is  ulti- 
mately moving  cannot  be  discovered  by  external  observation. 
For  in  the  case  of  just  these  objects,  which  most  define  the  man, 
the  'recession  of  the  stimulus'  has  proceeded  to  infinity;  and 
further,  the  'stimulus' — these  objects  themselves — has  become 
intangible  in  nature.  Hence  we  cannot  identify  a  man's  major 
purposes  in  the  manner  suggested  by  Holt,  that  of  exhibiting  the 
objects  (though  we  might  attempt  a  metaphysical  definition  of 
them) ;  nor  can  we  discover  them  by  Freud's  method  of  uncover- 
ing repressed  wishes.  The  best  instrument  which  has  so  far 
been  devised  for  discovering  what  these  major  wishes  are  is,  I 
believe,  an  ancient  one, — the  Platonic  logic  of  the  affections.  It 
is  the  peculiar  merit  of  the  Socratic  dialectic,  as  shaped  by 
Plato,  that  it  reveals  precisely  that  part  of  the  subconscious  self 
(if  we  wish  to  describe  in  these  terms  that  unanalyzed  part  of 
the  self  which  Socrates,  as  midwife,  undertook  to  deliver)  which 
as  censor  of  the  individual  is  also  the  common  sense,  and  so  the 
common  censor,  of  mankind.^ 

The  working  part  of  the  dialectic  of  Plato  might  be  roughly 
described  as  a  comparison  of  an  experimental  definition  of  a 
term  (in  connotation)  with  accepted  cases  of  its  denotation. 
If  courage  be  defined  as  daring;  and  it  is  admitted  that  one  who 

1  One  of  the  most  vigorous  and  inspiriting  aspects  of  Holt's  book  is  its  recognition 
of  points  of  contact  with  Platonic  psychology  and  ethics.  The  main  point  of  this 
agreement  is  in  the  doctrine  that  only  the  good  man  is  free,  and  only  the  wise 
can  be  good.  Holt's  method  of  reaching  this  goal  of  freedom,  by  discrimination 
and  synthesis,  differs  from  the  dialectic  of  Plato,  as  I  shall  try  to  make  clear, 
precisely  in  that  part  of  the  subconscious  which  it  is  destined  to  set  free.  It  is 
needless  to  point  out  that  the  freedom  which  Plato  had  in  mind  was  quite  consistent 
with  a  somewhat  ascetic,  or  repressive,  attitude  toward  the  body.  The  Sym- 
posium presents  us  with  perhaps  the  first  instance  of  a  conscious  philosophy  of 
sublimation,  by  finding  in  universal  terms  an  equivalent  for  the  specific  forms  of 
wish.  If  Plato  appears  in  any  modern  dress,  it  must  be  as  a  democratized  Plato, 
so  far  as  the  rank  of  our  various  affections  is  concerned.  This  modern  contribution 
to  Plato's  thought,  the  release  of  the  human  spirit  from  distrust  of  its  'lower 
nature,'  is  perfectly  carried  out  in  Holt's  theory.  But  the  question  remaining 
unanswered  is.  How  shall  we  distinguish  among  our  wishes  those  which  identify 
ourselves,  and  so  have  especial  right  to  be  regarded  as  major  or  ruling  wishes? 
What  is  it  which,  on  the  whole,  we  want  to  do?  In  answering  this  question  Plato's 
method,  or  a  modified  form  of  it,  is  still,  I  hold,  our  best  recourse. 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  495 

dares  in  an  ignorant  and  foolhardy  manner  is  not  to  be  called 
courageous,  we  must  change  the  definition  of  courage  so  as  to 
include  the  element  of  knowledge.  The  judgment  that  the 
foolhardy  person  is  not  to  be  called  courageous  can  be  taken  as 
more  certain  than  the  definition,  only  because  one's  power  of 
applying  a  concept  in  recognizing  or  excluding  is  more  certain 
than  one's  power  to  express  it  in  terms  of  predicates.  It  must 
be  assumed  that  one  knows  what  courage  is,  for  the  purposes  of 
these  recognitions,  in  order  that  the  dialectical  apparatus  shall 
have  a  fixed  ground  to  operate  from.  Yes,  one  must  know  what 
courage  is,  that  is,  one  must  actually  know  the  connotation,  in 
order  to  effect  these  judgments  of  denotation.  But  this  knowl- 
edge of  the  essence  as  an  inaccessible  knowledge  may  be  called 
relatively  subconscious ;  one  can  reach  it  for  purposes  of  expression 
only  by  a  succession  of  these  dialectical  efforts  or  experiments. 

Now  this  process,  which  is  applied  by  Plato  chiefly  to  the  task 
of  learning  what  we  think,  is  also  quite  spontaneously  applied 
by  all  of  us  to  the  task  of  learning  what  we  want.  For  all  asser- 
tions of  the  form  '  I  wish  X '  may  be  regarded  as  essays  at  def- 
inition, namely  the  definition  of  a  wish  in  terms  of  its  objects. 
And  all  such  definitions,  which  children  and  others  are  inclined 
to  put  forth  with  a  high  sense  of  dogmatic  certainty,  are  seen  in 
the  course  of  experience  to  be,  in  truth,  highly  hypothetical. 
They  are,  in  effect,  hypothetical  interpretations  of  a  wish,  which 
in  its  completeness  remains  unknown  in  quite  the  same  way  as 
the  nature  of  justice  or  courage  is  unknown.  And  the  general 
effect  of  experience  is  to  lead  to  revisions  of  the  assumed  def- 
inition. Not  all  learning  by  experience,  however,  is  dialectical 
in  character;  indeed  the  most  conspicuous  examples  are  not  so, 
and  partly  perhaps  for  this  reason  this  analogy,  so  far  as  I  know, 
has  not  been  pointed  out  in  current  discussions  of  the  learning 
process. 

For  in  the  common  processes  of  motor  learning,  in  which 
pleasures  and  pains,  or  the  'original  satisfiers  and  annoyers'  of 
which  Professor  Thorndike  speaks,  furnish  the  definitive  '  yeses ' 
and  '  noes'  for  our  active  experiments,  the  revisions  that  take  place 
affect  not  so  much  our  understanding  of  our  wishes  as  our  under- 


496  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

standing  of  our  objects.  If  yielding  to  curiosity  brings  the  finger 
into  the  flame,  or  yielding  to  the  pecking  impulse  leads  a  chicken 
to  take  up  an  undesirable  lady-bug,  definite  sensible  'annoyers' 
are  encountered  whose  relation  to  the  original  impulse  is  simply 
an  empirical  fact.  The  result  of  such  an  experience  is  likely  to 
be  simply  caution  in  getting  the  rose  without  the  thorn,  or  a 
discrimination  as  of  the  edible  from  the  non-edible  insects, 
without  any  reflection  upon  the  nature  of  the  impulse  itself. 
It  is  not,  for  instance,  that  the  chicken's  hunger  was  mis- 
directed ;  but  that  what  it  took  to  be  the  same  object  as  one  which 
had  previously  satisfied  it  was  not  in  fact  the  same;  the  genus 
was  too  widely  drawn.  Nature  might  have  made  all  flame  as 
innocent  as  incense,  and  all  lady-bugs  as  sweet  as  corn,  so  far  as 
our  insight  yet  goes;  the  attributes  of  these  things  have  to  be 
learned  as  one  learns  the  alphabet,  without  inner  illumination. 

There  is  a  shade  more  reflection  involved  in  another  type  of 
dissatisfaction.  There  are  some  experiments  which  at  the  mo- 
ment seem  to  turn  out  well,  but  which  bring  painful  results  at 
greater  or  lesser  distance  from  the  satisfaction.  The  pains  which 
follow  over-indulgence  may,  if  one  has  sufficient  mentality  to 
'integrate'  them  with  his  experience,  lead  to  the  judgment, 
"This,  after  all,  is  not  what  I  want."  But  here  again  nature 
might  have  made  us  so  that  some  high  orgy  could  be  pursued 
without  resulting  depression ;  or,  if  not,  the  question  might  still 
be  raised,  and  is  raised,  whether  the  orgy,  or  some  orgy  like  it, 
might  not  be  worth  the  cost.  So  long  as  the  satisfaction  itself 
shines  out  with  unclouded  light,  and  the  connected  pains  are 
externally  related  to  it,  the  entire  eff"ort  of  revision  is  directed 
to  the  circumstances  and  not  to  the  wish. 

But  there  is  a  third  type  of  experience,  and  here  it  is  that  we 
encounter  the  dialectic  change,  in  which  an  achievement  is 
followed  by  an  ill-defined  sense  that  one  is  not,  after  all,  satis- 
fied with  that  apparent  satisfaction.  The  memory  of  that  terminal 
joy  itself  is  mixed  with  unpleasantness.  There  is  what  I  should 
call  a  mental  negative  after-image  of  the  experience.  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  illustrate;  but  a  common  example  may  be  taken  from 
almost  any  experience  of  impulsive  pugnacity.     I  have  a  diso- 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  497 

bedient  child;  and  upon  an  accumulation  of  petty  failures  to 
obey  I  act  upon  the  injunction  of  a  contemporary  sage,  'Never 
punish  a  child  except  in  anger.'  With  the  aid  of  this  emphasis 
I  secure  compliance,  and  am  satisfied.  But  quite  possibly  after 
some  time  my  sense  of  triumph  may  fade.  I  defined  my  wish 
in  terms  of  compliance,  and  I  gained  it;  but  what  I  gained  was 
not  what  I  wanted, — the  error  was  in  my  understanding  of  my 
own  wish.  I  may  be  puzzled  to  know  in  what  respect  I  have 
failed;  for  what  is  now  required  is  a  new  effort  at  analysis,  a  new 
hypothesis,  an  essentially  inductive  achievement  in  naming  what 
was  wrong  and  so  revising  my  definition.  I  may  emerge  with 
the  supposition  that  what  will  satisfy  me  is  a  free  compliance,  or 
one  based  on  confidence  rather  than  on  necessity.  But  whatever 
the  outcome,  the  process  is  a  dialectic  process.  It  might  be 
called  the  dialectic  of  the  will. 

Like  the  Platonic  dialectic  of  concepts,  it  assumes  that  the 
judgment  of  denotation  is  more  certain  than  the  judgment  of  analysis 
of  connotation.  The  judgment  of  denotation  here  takes  the  form : 
This  experience  is,  or  is  not,  a  case  of  what  I  wish.  And  as  in 
the  Platonic  dialectic,  the  certainty,  in  turn,  of  this  judgment  of 
denotation  depends  upon  the  presence  of  a  'subconscious' 
knowledge  of  what,  in  connotation,  I  want. 

The  distinction  between  this  process  and  the  first-named 
process  of  learning  from  experience  of  pleasure  and  pain  niay 
appear  in  this,  that  this  '  mental  after-image '  is  more  potent  than 
pleasures  or  pains  to  determine  the  history  of  a  wish.  Thus,  a 
fight  may  be  attended  with  much  pain  and  subsequent  discom- 
fort; but  if  the  after-image  is  gratifying,  the  pain  seems  to  have  a 
wholly  negligible  effect  in  deterring  the  enthusiastic  fighter. 
The  agony  of  childbirth  does  not  deter  the  normal  mother  from 
again  entering  the  same  cycle  of  experience.  And  on  the  other 
hand  a  slight  shade  of  dissatisfaction  in  the  after-image  may 
nullify  the  effect  of  the  keenest  pleasure  in  inducing  a  repetition 
of  the  successful  behavior.  If  pain  is,  in  Sherrington's  sense, 
'  prepotent '  as  a  stimulus ;  the  mental  after-image  is  *  prepotent ' 
(or  has  become  so  in  the  human  species)  in  fixing  the  definitions  of 
wishes,  and  so  in  determining  habits. 


498  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Thus  we  are  'driven  on'  by  experience,  if  not  to  morality,  at 
least  to  a  more  adequate  knowledge  of  what  we  want,  by  a  dia- 
lectic process  whose  motive  power  comes  from  the  free,  cooper- 
ative subconsciousness,  not  from  the  repressed  subconsciousness. 

VI. 

By  aid  of  this  conception  of  an  experiential  dialectic  of  the 
will,  we  may  now  be  able  so  far  to  bridge  the  initial  difference 
in  terminology  between  the  ethics  of  Royce  and  the  Holt- 
Freudian  ethics  as  to  show  what  their  relations  are.  Let  me 
attempt  to  resume  these  relations  in  a  series  of  propositions. 

(a)  For  Royce  the  moral  problem  of  the  individual  might  be  stated 
as  a  problfM.^,.Jindin£__what  on  the  whole  one  wants  to  do, — and 
thendoing^itjthe  process  of  this  discovery  is  analogous  rather  to  the 
dialectic  of _the  will  than  to  the  method  of  discrimination. 

For  Royce,  as  for  Holt,  the  'soul'  or  self  is  to  be  defined  in 
terms  of  purpose.  It  makes  little  difference  in  this  connection 
whether  we  call  the  psychological  materials  desires,  instincts,  or 
wishes.^  In  either  case,  it  is  not  by  the  possession  of  any  soul- 
substance  that  I  am  defined  a  self;  but  it  is  "by  this  meaning 
of  my  life-plan,  by  this  possession  of  an  ideal. "^  And  Royce's 
conception  of  the  moral  problem  is  so  far  opposed  to  any  kind  of 
heteronomy  that  the  whole  duty  of  any  man  is  to  be  foundjn.  the 
fulfilling  of  his  unique  purpose. 

1  Compare  Royce's  definition  of  a  desire  (Outlines  of  Psychology,  p.  366)  with 
Holt's  definition  of  wish  (p.  56).  For  Royce,  "A  desire  means  a  tendency  to  action, 
experienced  as  such,  and  at  the  same  time  felt  as  a  relatively  satisfactory  tendency." 
Of  the  wish.  Holt  says  that  it  is  "a  course  of  action  which  the  living  body  executes 
or  is  prepared  to  execute  with  regard  to  some  object  or  some  fact  of  its  environ- 
ment." Both  definitions  raise  the  question  what  kind  of  existence  a  desire  or 
wish  may  have  when  the  course  of  action  referred  to  is  not  carried  out, — which  is 
of  course  their  characteristic  mode  of  existence.  If  we  may  assume  that  "  tendency 
to  action"  in  the  one  case,  and  "prepared  to  execute"  in  the  other,  mean  the 
same  condition  of  incipient  activity  and  physiological  setting,  the  differences 
between  the  concepts  seem  to  be  simply  (i)  that  Royce  expressly  recognizes  the 
element  of  consciousness,  and  (2)  that  Holt  expressly  recognizes  the  environing 
objects  with  which  the  action,  if  it  became  actual,  would  deal.  The  definitions  are 
certainly  not  inconsistent. 

2  The  World  and  the  Individual,  Vol.  II,  p.  276.  For  Holt,  however,  the  soul 
is  a  unity  only  when  integration  is  accomplished:  he  frequently  uses  the  plural  of 
purpose  or  wish  as  equi%'alcnt  to  soul.     See  pp.  49,  200  f.,  cf.  pp.  95,  118. 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  499 

As  to  the  process  of  accomplishing  this,  the  original  difficulty  is 
that  one  does  not  know  what  one's  purpose  is,  at  least  in  terms 
of  the  objects  with  which  he  must  deal.  It  is  characteristic  of 
the  purpose  that  it  is  forever  in  search  of  its  own  completed 
meaning.  Its  life  is  a  movement  from  self-ignorance  to  self- 
knowledge.  This  knowledge  comes  in  dealing  with  the  world  of 
objects,  for  they  are  the  completions  of  the  meaning  of  the  pur- 
poses, their  'external  meanings,'  more  organically  parts  of  the 
purposes  themselves  than  are  the  objects  of  Holt's  wishes  parts 
of  the  wish.^  It  is  through  contact  with  objects  that  I  learn 
to  recognize  in  them  (or  as  Plato  would  say,  to  recollect)  my  own 
meaning. 

Royce  does  not  describe  the  process  through  which  a  purpose 
finds  its  meaning  as  a  dialectic  process;  and  there  are  sufficient 
reasons  for  resorting  to  new  terms.  Since  Hegel's  time  this 
word  has  borne  a  connotation  which  was  foreign  to  Plato,  that  of 
determining  in  advance  the  course  which  experience  must  follow; 
and  in  the  rejection  of  this  prescriptive  tyranny,  the  descriptive 
value  of  the  concept,  together  with  its  experiential  character, 
have  been  largely  overlooked.  The  notion  of  an  a  priori  deduc- 
tion of  the  course  of  experience  is  as  foreign  to  Royce  as  to  Plato ; 
the  quest  is  experimental,  and  it  is  essentially  the  same  quest. 
So  far  as  it  has  a  typical  history,  Royce  describes  it  about  as 
follows:  Our  life  at  any  moment  shows  two  regions  or  strata: 
there  is  a  region  in  which,  having  found  out  what  we  want  and 
have  to  do,  we  have  adopted  habits  toward  various  objects, — 
these  are  our  known  and  recurrent  wishes;  and  there  is  a  region 
^f  groping,  of  working  by  trial  and  error,  in  pursuit  of  the  residual 
meaning  yet  ungrasped,  "interpolating  new  terms  in  a  series  of 
stages  that  lie  between  the  original  condition  of  the  organism  and 
a  certain  ideal  goal,  which  the  individual  organism  never 
reaches. "2 

The  findings  of  this  experimental  quest,  Royce  first  refers  to  as 

1  The  fact  that,  according  to  the  type  of  idealism  which  Royce  holds,  the  world 
of  objects  only  exists  for  me  as  a  world  of  the  external  meanings  of  my  ideas  does 
not,  of  course,  imply  that  the  objects  with  which  any  given  wish  has  to  reckon 
exist  only  as  external  meanings  of  that  particular  wish. 

2  The  World  and  the  Individual,  Vol.  II,  p.  317. 


500  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

'tasks'  and  'deeds'  and  'offices'  such  as  mark  off  my  contrast 
with  my  fellows.  Later  he  is  inclined  to  refer  to  them  as  'causes' 
such  as  at  once  set  me  off  and  unite  me  in  common  undertakings 
with  others.  To  discover  one's  cause  and  be  loyal  to  it;  this  is 
the  essentially  ethical  problem.  And  the  recognition  of  the 
cause  which  identifies  one  as  a  person  is  so  far  a  critical  event 
in  the  history  of  the  will  that  it  puts  a  check  upon  the  freedom  of 
experimentation.  "The  choice  of  a  special  personal  cause  is  a 
sort  of  ethical  marriage  to  this  cause. "^  Yet  all  such  choices  are 
made  in  a  degree  of  ignorance;  they  are  fallible,  and  when  it 
becomes  "unquestionably  evident  that  the  continuance  of  this 
marriage  involves  positive  unfaithfulness  to  the  cause  of  universal 
loyalty,"  it  must  be  dissolved,  and  the  definition  revised. 

The  justice  of  bringing  this  process  of  choosing  a  cause  by 
successive  revisions  into  comparison  with  the  dialectic  above 
described  lies  in  the  assumption  that  the  finding  of  a  cause  is  a 
judgment  of  recognition,  and  so  depends  upon  some  kind  of  prior 
possession  of  the  connotation  of  the  cause. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  Royce  does  not  expressly  argue  that 
any  such  prior  knowledge  is  implied  in  the  choosing  process. 
Still  less  does  he  apply  to  it  the  term  'subconscious.'  This  term 
Royce  for  the  most  part  avoids.^  But  such  seems  to  me  to  be 
the  implication  of  his  teaching.  If  I  know  at  all  that  I  exist,  it 
must  be,  according  to  Royce,  as  entertaining  a  distinctive  pur- 
pose; and  if  ever  I  am  able  to  judge  that  "This  is  what  I 
seek,"  the  'what'  of  my  search  must  already  be  known  to  me 

*  The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  p.  191. 

*  In  Outlines  of  Psychology,  the  contrast  between  unanalyzed  and  analyzed 
mental  states  covers  part  of  the  ground  of  the  contrast  between  the  'allied'  sub- 
consciousness and  consciousness  (pp.  105-116);  and  my  own  belief  is  that  here 
Royce's  terminology  is  less  likely  to  be  misleading. 

But  in  speaking  of  "that  mysterious  and  personal  aspect  of  conscience  upon 
which  common  sense  insists,"  he  says  that  "Such  a  loyal  choice  as  I  have  described 
.  .  .  calls  out  all  of  one's  personal  and  more  or  less  unconsciously  present  instincts, 
interests,  affections,  one's  socially  formed  habits,  and  whatever  else  is  woven  into 
the  unity  of  each  individual  self  ...  it  involves  all  the  mystery  of  finding  out 
that  some  cause  awakens  us,  fascinates  us,  reverberates  through  our  whole  being 
.  .  .  (and  thus)  involves  more  than  mere  conscious  choice.  It  involves  that  re- 
sponse of  our  entire  nature  conscious  and  unconscious,  which  makes  loyalty  so 
precious."     Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  pp.  I94f. 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  50I 

somewhat  as  the  meaning  of  justice  was  known  at  the  outset 
to  the  Socratic  enquirer.^ 

(&)  In  so  far  as  the  will  in  seeking  its  cause  or  causes  must  choose 
from  empirically  given  materials,  Royce's  ethics  is  an  ethics  'from 
below.' 

As  a  psychological  doctrine,  Royce  accepts  the  entire  depen- 
dence of  the  will  upon  previous  experience  for  its  contents,  quite 
as  James  stated  the,  case.  "We  can  never  consciously  and 
directly  will  any  really  novel  course  of  action.  We  can  directly 
will  an  act  only  when  we  have  before  done  that  act,  and  have  so 
experienced  the  nature  of  it."^  This  principle  holds  good  not 
alone  for  choices  of  physical  alternatives,  but  for  moral  choices 
as  well:  we  cannot  choose  to  be  self-controlled  unless  we  have 
first  experienced  what  self-control  means.  It  is  through  imi- 
tation that  we  first  find  ourselves  taking  attitudes  which  have 
moral  value:  and  having  thus  become,  as  it  were,  involuntarily 
good,  we  may  then  deliberately  pursue  goodness.  But  the  first 
data  for  all  voluntary  behavior  are  furnished  by  instinctive 
actions.  These  instincts,  as  we  inherit  them,  are  "planlessly 
numerous"  (p.  373);  their  existence  imposes  upon  us  a  problem 
of  organization.  Certainly  it  is  experience  which  here  drives  us 
on  to  morals. 

(c)  But  neither  for  Holt  nor  for  Royce  can  the  principle  of  choice 
or  selection  be  given  with  the  materials  for  choice  as  a  datum  of 
experience.  This  principle  of  choice  has  its  psychological  expres- 
sion as  an  '  instinct '  of  greater  generality.  To  this  extent,  ethics 
can  be  neither  'from  below  '  nor  'from  above,'  but  from  within. 

All  evaluations  make  use  of  a  standard  of  evaluation;  and 
however  the  things  to  be  chosen  or  estimated  may  be  found  in 
experience,  and  the  standard  itself  come  to  consciousness  only 
with  the  material  of  the  problem,  it  is  not  the  data  which  have 
furnished  the  standard. 

Royce  follows  James  in  treating  the  psychology  of  choice  as  a 
matter  of  selective  attention,  an  "attentive  furthering  of  our 
interest  in  one  act  or  desire  as  against  another. "^     Such  pref- 

1  See  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  pp.  i69f.  Also  The  World  and  the  Individual,  Vol. 
II,  pp.  434.  445- 

2  Outlines  of  Psychology,  p.  369. 

» Ibid.,  p.  369;  The  World  and  the  Individual,  Vol.  II,  p.  354. 


502  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

erential  attention,  which  is  will  in  the  stricter  sense,  may  be 
traced  to  the  interaction  between  momentarily  presented  in- 
terests (wishes,  instinctive-impulses)  and  a  more  permanent 
policy,  a  "system  of  ruling  motives"  itself  the  result  of  previous 
choosing  and  integrating.  But  the  problem  of  accounting  for 
the  earlier  choices  which  established  this  system  is  still  to  be  met. 
If  we  refer  preference  to  imitation,  and  say  that  the  desire  to 
imitate  is  itself  an  instinct,  or  a  complex  of  instincts,^  we  must 
admit  that  neither  the  tendency  to  imitate,  nor  the  tendency  to 
oppose,  if  such  general  tendencies  exist,  prescribe  what  things  are 
chosen  for  imitation  and  what  for  opposition.  For  psychology 
as  well  as  for  metaphysics  the  will  must  be  identified  with  a 
persistent  principle  of  preference.  And  while  (as  the  critics  of 
Wundt's  theory  of  apperception  have  insisted)  there  is  some  dif- 
ficulty in  reconciling  the  notion  of  a  conscious  function  engaged 
in  influencing  its  own  states,  with  the  notion  of  a  consciousness 
composed  wholly  of  states,  it  is  possibly  this  latter  notion  that 
has  made  the  difficulty.  We  need  only  say  that  the  conception 
of  an  instinct  or  disposition  capable  of  regulating  the  action  of 
other  instincts  (as  in  the  disposition  to  play)  will  furnish  a  suf- 
ficient psychological  scheme  for  such  a  persistent  principle.  Its 
psychological  expression  would  be  that  of  a  most  general  'in- 
stinct.* 

{d)  Royce  recognizes  the  place  for  such  an  instinct,  and  partially 
describes  it. 

In  considering  the  will  as  a  source  of  originality  Royce  de- 
scribes an  instinct  of  highly  general  character,  which  partly 
fulfils  the  conditions  for  choice  above  described  .^  The  special 
problem  being  to  account  for  "the  apparently  spontaneous 
variations  of  our  habits  which  appear  in  the  course  of  life  and 
which  cannot  be  altogether  explained  as  due  to  external  stimu- 
lations," they  are  referred  to  a  restlessness,  which  is  quantitative 
and  to  some  degree  characteristic  of  species,  and  which  is  "some- 
thing very  much  more  general  in  its  character  than  is  any  one  of 
the  specific  instincts  upon  which  our  particular  habits  are  formed" 

*  Outlines  of  Psychology,  p.  276. 

*  Ibid.,  Ch.  xiii. 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  503 

(p.  318).  This  restlessness  is  something  other  than  the  rehearsal 
of  an  inherited  repertoire  of  responses,  such  as  Thorndike  has 
appealed  to.  It  is  "the  power  of  the  organism  to  persist  in 
seeking  for  new  adjustments  whether  the  environment  at  first 
suggests  them  or  not,  to  persist  in  struggling  toward  its  wholly 
unknown  goal,  whether  there  is  any  apparent  opportunity  for 
reaching  such  a  goal  or  not."  This  restlessness  may  reach  the 
intensity  of  an  independent  passion,  as  in  the  absorption  of  play 
or  of  invention;  it  is  at  the  basis  of  all  our  current  selective  at- 
tention, so  far  as  its  quantity  of  persistence  is  concerned  (p.  328). 
And  as  for  its  organic  basis,  it  "depends  upon  vital  activities 
which  are  as  elemental  as  the  'tropisms'  of  the  organisms  upon 
which  Loeb  experimented"  (p.  327;  see  also  the  preface).  It 
may  be  called  simply  a  "general  instinct  to  persist  in  trying." 

We  can  hardly  agree  in  classing  with  the  tropisms  of  Loeb  a 
tendency  or  set  of  tendencies  so  non-specific  in  direction  that 
their  goal  can  be  called  'wholly  unknown,'  save  indeed  for  the 
fact  that  it  is  something  novel,  i.  e.,  something  not  identical  with 
what  is  already  familiar.  Such  an  impulse  (a  negative  iso-trop- 
ism?)  would  be  open  to  the  criticism  of  McDougall  upon  the  pos- 
sibility of  an  organic  basis  for  curiosity.^  But  apart  from  this, 
the  'instinct  to  persist  in  trying'  cannot  be  identical  with  the 
principle  of  selection  which  we  seek,  because  of  this  same  absence 
of  content  or  direction.  It  would  appear,  of  itself,  to  imply  a 
still  deeper  and  positive  'tropism';  for  unless  we  are  ready  to 
say  that  the  restlessness  in  question  is  purely  a  distaste  of  the 
old  because  it  is  old,  or  purely  a  love  of  action  for  the  sake  of 
being  in  action,  it  would  be  naturally  explained  as  a  case  of  the 
'negative  after-image'  above  described,  a  recognition  thatt  he  self 

1  "  This  instinct  is  excited  not  by  any  simple  sense-impressions,  nor  yet  by  any 
specific  complex  of  sense-impressions;  for  there  is  no  one  class  of  objects  to  which 
it  is  especially  directed  or  in  the  presence  of  which  it  is  invariably  displayed.  .  .  . 
In  short,  the  condition  of  excitement  of  the  impulse  of  curiosity  seems  to  be  in 
all  cases  the  presence  of  a  strange  or  unfamiliar  element  in  whatever  is  partly 
familiar,  whether  the  object  be  one  of  sense-perception  (as  exclusively  in  the 
animals  and  very  young  children),  or  one  contemplated  in  thought  only.  In  either 
case  the  element  of  strangeness  ...  is  something  which  exists  only  for  the 
organism,  .  .  .  and  is,  in  fact,  the  meaning  of  the  object  for  the  organism  in  so 
far  as  curiosity  is  awakened."     (William  McDougall.     Body  and  Mind,  pp.  266f.) 


504  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

as  a  whole  is  not  satisfied  in  any  of  its  present  objects,  because  the 
self  already  knows  'subconsciously'  what  it  wants. 

(e)  Further  suggestions  for  its  description  are  found  in  the  work 
of  Jung  and  of  Putnam.  The  concept  of  a  ''necessary  wish  or 
desire^*  defined. 

Whatever  may  be  needed  to  complete  the  psychological  concept 
of  a  selective  principle,  it  is  an  important  step  in  advance  to 
have  recognized,  as  Royce  has  done,  the  existence  of  such  a  thing 
as  a  general  instinct,  and  to  have  proposed  for  it  an  elemental 
organic  basis.  What  is  required  is  a  native  tendency  which  is 
determined,  not  by  the  specific  disposition  of  this  or  that  nervous 
path,  but  by  the  form  of  metabolism  of  the  nervous  processes 
everywhere.  It  would  be  such  a  tendency  that  we  could  say, 
"To  be  alive  is  to  wish  thus  and  thus."  Such  a  desire  could  be 
regarded  as  a  necessary  desire. 

I  have  already  mentioned  that  in  the  school  of  Freud,  and 
especially  in  the  work  of  C.  G.  Jung,  there  has  been  a  tendency 
to  recognize  genetic  relations  among  instincts,  and  finally  to  set 
up  the  hypothesis  of  an  Ur-instinct  from  which  all  others  are 
derived  by  differentiation.  This  is  a  result  of  the  simple  consider- 
ation that  'sublimation'  implies  a  constant  which  undergoes 
transformation;  and  how  far  back  one  pursues  the  constant 
depends  on  how  far  one  recognizes  the  scope  of  sublimation.  For 
Freud  the  notion  of  'libido'  represents  the  constant  of  a  group  of 
allotropic  sex-tendencies  and  their  sublimations.  For  Jung, 
*  libido '  loses  its  sexual  character  altogether  and  becomes  as  nearly 
as  possible  craving  in  general.  "  From  the  descriptive  standpoint, 
psychoanalysis  accepts  the  multiplicity  of  instincts.  From  the 
genetic  standpoint  it  is  otherwise.  It  regards  the  multiplicity 
of  instincts  as  issuing  out  of  relative  unity,  the  primitive  libido. 
It  recognizes  that  definite  quantities  of  the  primitive  libido  are 
split  off,  associated  with  the  recently  created  functions,  and 
finally  merged  with  them."^  Jung  himself  draws  the  parallel 
between  the  introduction  of  this  generalized  concept  of  '  libido ' 
and  R.  Mayer's  introduction  into  dynamics  of  the  modern  concept 
of  energy.     "We  term  libido  that  energy  which  manifests  itself 

'  Theory  of  Psychoanalysis,  p.  42. 


No.  3.]  THE  HOLT-FREUDIAN  ETHICS.  505 

by  vital  processes,  which  is  subjectively  perceived  as  aspiration » 
longing  and  striving.  We  see  in  the  diversity  of  natural  phe- 
nomena the  desire,  the  libido,  in  the  most  diverse  applications  and 
forms.  .  .  .  Claparede  in  a  conversation  once  remarked  that  we 
could  as  well  use  the  term  'interest.'" 

Dr.  James  J.  Putnam,  who  has  been  alert  from  the  first  to  the 
philosophical  aspect  of  Freud's  psychology,  and  has  repeatedly 
called  the  attention  of  his  colleagues  to  their  importance,  has 
especially  noted  (in  his  Presidential  Address  before  the  American 
Psychopathological  Association,  May,  19 13)  the  wider  affiliations 
of  the  concept  as  used  by  Jung: 

"Let  its  name  be  altered,  and  its  functions  but  slightly  more 
expanded,  and  we  have  Bergson's  poussee  vitale,  the  understudy 
of  'self-activity.'"^ 

If  the  genetic  surmises  of  Jung  are  substantiated  .^  we  shall 
have  made  progress  toward  recognizing  the  empirical  basis  for  a 
'soul,'  not  alone  in  the  sense  of  a  result  of  integrative  processes^ 
but  as  a  prior  condition  of  such  processes.  It  would  remain, 
Jung  thinks,  as  purely  an  hypothetical  entity  as  physical  energy. 
"I  maintain  that  the  conception  of  libido  with  which  we  are 
working  is  not  only  not  concrete  or  known,  but  is  an  unknown  x, 
a  conceptual  image,  a  token,  and  no  more  real  than  the  energy 
in  the  conceptual  world  of  the  physicist."^  Yet  he  declares 
also  that  'in  nature'  the  artificial  distinction  between  hunger 
and  the  sex  impulse  does  not  exist;  that  here  we  find  only  a  con- 
tinuous 'instinct  of  Hfe,'  a  will  to  live,  which  so  far  coincides 
with  the  Will  of  Schopenhauer.  It  would  be  difficult  to  reconcile 
these  two  contrasting  views  of  the  original  impulse,  were  it  not 
apparent  that  the  entities  with  which  psychology  deals  are 
'found  in  nature'  in  two  quite  different  ways,  (a)  as  the  mate- 
rials of  experience  and  (&)  as  the  accompanying  (and,  if  you 
like,  subconscious)  conditions  of  the  movement  of  experience, 
especially  for  its  selective  character.  The  most  general  instinct, 
under  whatever  name,  is  found  in  nature,  but  in  the  second  way; 

1  The  Journal  of  Abnormal  Psychology,  August-Sept.,  1913,  p.  12. 

2  They  might  profitably  be  compared  with  those  of  G.  H.  Schneider. 
8  Op.  cit.,  p.  40. 


506  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

hence  it  is  certainly  not    known  as  a  physical  object  may  be 
known.     But  it  is  not  merely  an  hypothesis. 

(/)  The  resulting  view  of  ethics  attaches  some  meaning  to  the 
concept  of  an  ethics  'from  above.' 

If  we  are  right  in  concluding  that  on  psychological  grounds  as 
well  as  on  metaphysical  grounds  there  is  a  continuity  and  identity 
in  that  life-policy  which  we  call  the  will,  soul,  or  self,  the  law  of 
our  life  must  be  defined  in  terms  of  those  objects  or  causes  which 
this  unitary  wish  can  recognize  as  its  own.  What  we  have  to 
seek  in  this  world  as  moral  agents  is  not  primarily  the  satisfaction 
of  a  differentiating  bundle  of  wishes:  it  is  the  satisfaction  of 
the  Wish. 

Loyalty  to  the  object  which  the  Wish  at  any  time  can  recognize 
as  its  own  must  determine  the  destiny  of  all  minor  wishes;  though 
■every  such  minor  wish,  other  things  equal,  will  be  interpreted  as  a 
specific  application  of  the  original  Wish.  This  will  be  its  'mean- 
ing' ;  and  the  ethics  of  particular  instincts  will  be  summarized  in 
the  principle,  use  them  for  what  they  mean. 

When  the  Wish  has  embodied  itself  in  a  cause,  however,  there 
is  a  note  of  ruthlessness  in  its  attitude  to  the  outstanding  wishes, 
which  Royce  has  signalized  in  the  word  loyalty.  It  may  not  be 
amiss  to  point  out  the  cognate  note  in  a  thinker  of  very  different 
mould,  who  has  likewise  recognized  a  most  general  instinct, 
giving  it  the  not  wholly  false  name  of  the  will  to  power.  Geist, 
said  Nietzsche,  ist  das  Lehen,  das  selher  in's  Leben  schneidet. 

But  Nietzsche's  conception  of  the  wish,  as  a  subjective  urge 
for  the  unloading  of  energy,  lacks  just  that  element  of  permanent 
attachment  to  an  external  meaning  which  is  insisted  upon  by 
both  writers  whom  we  have  been  comparing.  And  if,  as  Royce 
maintains,  that  external  meaning  is  from  the  first  the  divine  being, 
whether  or  not  we  consciously  so  define  it,  our  rule  of  life  becomes 
also,  to  this  extent,  an  'ethics  from  above.' 

William  Ernest  Hocking. 

Harvard  University. 


JOSIAII    ROYCE 

1876 

(Act.  20) 


WORDS     OF    PROFESSOR    ROYCE    AT   THE   WALTON 
HOTEL  AT  PHILADELPHIA,  DECEMBER  29,  1915.1 

T  WAS  born  in  1855  in  California.  My  native  town  was  a 
-^  mining  town  in  the  Sierra  Nevada, — a  place  five  or  six  years 
older  than  myself.  My  earliest  recollections  include  a  very 
frequent  wonder  as  to  what  my  elders  meant  when  they  said 
that  this  was  a  new  community.  I  frequently  looked  at  the 
vestiges  left  by  the  former  diggings  of  miners,  saw  that  many 
pine  logs  were  rotten,  and  that  a  miner's  grave  was  to  be  found  in 
a  lonely  place  not  far  from  my  own  house.  Plainly  men  had  lived 
and  died  thereabouts.  I  dimly  reflected  that  this  sort  of  life 
had  apparently  been  going  on  ever  since  men  dwelt  thereabouts. 
The  logs  and  the  grave  looked  old.  The  sunsets  were  beautiful. 
The  wide  prospects  when  one  looked  across  the  Sacramento 
Valley  were  impressive,  and  had  long  interested  the  people  of 
whose  love  for  my  country  I  heard  much.  What  was  there  then 
in  this  place  that  ought  to  be  called  new,  or  for  that  matter, 
crude?  I  wondered,  and  gradually  came  to  feel  that  part  of 
my  life's  business  was  to  find  out  what  all  this  wonder  meant. 
My  earliest  teachers  in  philosophy  were  my  mother,  whose  private 
school,  held  for  some  years  in  our  own  house,  I  attended,  and 
my  sisters,  who  were  all  older  than  myself,  and  one  of  whom 
taught  me  to  read.  In  my  home  I  heard  the  Bible  very  fre- 
quently read,  and  very  greatly  enjoyed  my  mother's  reading  of 
Bible  stories,  although,  so  far  as  I  remember,  I  was  very  generally 
dissatisfied  with  the  requirements  of  observance  of  Sundays, 
which  stand  out  somewhat  prominently  in  my  memory.  Our 
home  training  in  these  respects  was  not,  as  I  now  think,  at  all 
excessively  strict.     But  without  being  aware  of  the  fact,  I  was  a 

1  After  the  dinner  at  the  Walton  Hotel,  Professor  Royce,  in  acknowledgment  of 
the  kindness  of  his  friends,  made  a  brief  statement,  largely  autobiographical  in 
its  character.  The  following  is  a  summary  of  this  statement,  and  is  founded  upon 
some  notes  which  friends  present  amongst  the  guests  have  kindly  supplied,  to 
aid  the  speaker  to  remind  his  friends  of  the  spirit  of  what  he  tried  to  express. 

507 


508  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

born  non-conformist.  The  Bible  stories  fascinated  me.  The 
observance  of  Sunday  aroused  from  an  early  time  a  certain  more 
or  less  passive  resistance,  which  was  stubborn,  although  seldom, 
I  think,  openly  rebellious. 

The  earliest  connected  story  that  I  independently  read  was  the 
Apocalypse,  from  a  large  print  New  Testament,  which  I  found  on 
the  table  in  our  living  room.  The  Apocalypse  did  not  tend  to 
teach  me  early  to  acquire  very  clear  ideas.  On  the  other  hand, 
I  did  early  receive  a  great  deal  of  training  in  dialectics,  from  the 
sister  nearest  to  me  in  age.  She  was  three  years  my  senior. 
She  was  very  patiently  persistent  in  showing  me  the  truth.  I 
was  nearly  as  persistent  in  maintaining  my  own  views.  Since 
she  was  patient,  I  believe  that  we  seldom  quarrelled  in  any  violent 
way.  But  on  occasion,  as  I  remember,  our  dear  mother  used, 
when  the  wrangling  grew  too  philosophical,  to  set  me  the  task 
of  keeping  still  for  an  hour.  The  training  was  needed,  but  it 
was  never  wholly  effective  in  suppressing  for  any  great  length  of 
time  the  dialectical  insistence. 

I  was  not  a  very  active  boy.  I  had  no  physical  skill  or  agility. 
I  was  timid  and  ineffective,  but  seem  to  have  been,  on  the 
whole,  prevailingly  cheerful,  and  not  extremely  irritable,  although 
I  was  certainly  more  or  less  given  to  petty  mischief,  in  so  far  as 
my  sisters  did  not  succeed  in  keeping  me  under  their  kindly 
watch. 

Since  I  grew  during  the  time  of  the  civil  war,  heard  a  good  deal 
about  it  from  people  near  me,  but  saw  nothing  of  the  conse- 
quences of  the  war  through  any  closer  inspection,  I  remained  as 
vague  about  this  matter  as  about  most  other  life  problems, — 
vague  but  often  enthusiastic.  My  earliest  great  patriotic  ex- 
perience came  at  the  end  of  the  civil  war,  when  the  news  of  the 
assassination  of  Lincoln  reached  us.  Thenceforth,  as  I  believe, 
I  had  a  country  as  well  as  a  religious  interest.  Both  of  these  were 
ineffective  interests,  except  in  so  far  as  they  were  attached  to  the 
already  mentioned  enthusiasms,  and  were  clarified  and  directed 
by  the  influence  of  my  mother  and  sisters.  Of  boys  outside 
the  household  I  so  far  knew  comparatively  little,  but  had  a  con- 
siderable tendency,  as  I  remember,  to  preach  down  to  what 


No.  3.]  WORDS  OF  PROFESSOR  ROYCE.  509 

I  supposed  to  be  the  level  of  these  other  boys, — a  predisposition 
which  did  not  prepare  me  for  social  success  in  the  place  in  which 
I  was  destined  to  pass  the  next  stage  of  my  development,  namely 
San  Francisco. 

When  we  went  to  live  in  San  Francisco,  I  for  the  first  time  saw, 
first  San  Francisco  Bay,  and  then  the  Ocean  itself,  which  fas- 
cinated me,  but  which  for  a  long  time  taught  me  little. 

About  June  1866,  I  began  to  attend  a  large  Grammar  School 
in  San  Francisco.  I  was  one  of  about  a  thousand  boys.  The 
ways  of  training  were  new  to  me.  My  comrades  very  generally 
found  me  disagreeably  striking  in  my  appearance,  by  reason  of 
the  fact  that  I  was  redheaded,  freckled,  countrified,  quaint,  and 
unable  to  play  boys'  games.  The  boys  in  question  gave  me  my 
first  introduction  to  the  'majesty  of  the  community.'  The 
introduction  was  impressively  disciplinary  and  persistent.  On 
the  whole  it  seemed  to  me  'not  joyous  but  grievous.'  In  the 
end  it  probably  proved  to  be  for  my  good.  Many  years  later, 
in  a  lecture  contained  in  the  first  volume  of  my  Problem  of 
Christianity,  I  summarized  what  I  remember  of  the  lesson  of 
the  training  which  my  schoolmates  very  frequently  gave  me,  in 
what  I  there  have  to  say  about  the  meaning  which  lies  behind 
the  Pauline  doctrine  of  original  sin,  as  set  forth  in  the  seventh 
chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans. 

Yet  my  mates  were  not  wholly  unkind,  and  I  remember 
lifelong  friendships  which  I  formed  in  that  Grammar  School,  and 
which  I  still  can  enjoy  whenever  I  meet  certain  of  my  dear 
California  friends. 

In  the  year  1871,  I  began  to  attend  the  University  of  Cali- 
fornia, where  I  received  my  first  degree  in  1875. 

The  principal  philosophical  influences  of  my  undergraduate 
years  were :  i .  The  really  very  great  and  deep  effect  produced  upon 
me  by  the  teaching  of  Professor  Joseph  LeConte, — himself 
a  former  pupil  of  Agassiz,  a  geologist,  a  comparatively  early 
defender  and  exponent  of  the  Darwinian  theory,  and  a  great 
light  in  the  firmament  of  the  University  of  California  of  those 
days;  2.  The  personal  influence  of  Edward  Rowland  Sill,  who 
was  my  teacher  in  English,  during  the  last  two  years  of  my 


5IO  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

undergraduate  life;  3.  The  literary  influence  of  John  Stuart  Mill 
and  of  Herbert  Spencer,  both  of  whom  I  read  during  those  years. 
There  was,  at  that  time,  no  regular  undergraduate  course  at  the 
University  of  California. 

After  graduation  I  studied  in  Germany,  and  later  at  the  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  still  later  returning  a  while  to  the  University 
of  California  from  1878  to  1882.  Since  1882  I  have  been  working 
at  Harvard.  In  Germany  I  heard  Lotze  at  Gottingen,  and  was 
for  a  while  strongly  under  his  influence.  The  reading  of  Schopen- 
hauer was  another  strong  influence  during  my  life  as  a  student  in 
Germany.  I  long  paid  a  great  deal  of  attention  to  the  philosophy 
of  Kant.  But  during  the  years  before  1890,  I  never  supposed 
myself  to  be  very  strongly  under  the  influence  of  Hegel,  nor  yet 
of  Green,  nor  of  either  of  the  Cairds.  I  should  confess  to  the 
charge  of  having  been,  during  my  German  period  of  study,  a 
good  deal  under  the  influence  of  the  Romantic  School,  whose 
philosophy  of  poetry  I  read  and  expounded  with  a  good  deal  of 
diligence.  But  I  early  cherished  a  strong  interest  in  logic,  and 
long  desired  to  get  a  fair  knowledge  of  mathematics. 

W^hen  I  review  this  whole  process,  I  strongly  feel  that  my 
deepest  motives  and  problems  have  centered  about  the  Idea  of 
the  Community,  although  this  idea  has  only  come  gradually  to 
my  clear  consciousness.  This  was  what  I  was  intensely  feeling, 
in  the  days  when  my  sisters  and  I  looked  across  the  Sacramento 
Valley,  and  wondered  about  the  great  world  beyond  our  moun- 
tains. This  was  what  I  failed  to  understand  when  my  mates 
taught  me  those  instructive  lessons  in  San  Francisco.  This 
was  that  which  I  tried  to  understand  when  I  went  to  Germany. 
I  have  been  unpractical, — always  socially  ineffective  as  regards 
genuine  'team  play,'  ignorant  of  politics,  an  ineffective  member 
of  committees,  and  a  poor  helper  of  concrete  social  enterprises. 
Meanwhile  I  have  always  been,  as  in  my  childhood,  a  good  deal 
of  a  non-conformist,  and  disposed  to  a  certain  rebellion.  An 
English  cousin  of  mine  not  long  since  told  me  that,  according  to 
a  family  tradition  current  in  his  community,  a  common  an- 
cestor of  ours  was  one  of  the  guards  who  stood  about  the  scaffold 
of  Charles  the  First.     I   can  easily  mention   the  Monarch  in 


No.  3.]  WORDS  OF  PROFESSOR  ROYCE.  51 1 

modern  Europe,  in  the  guard  about  whose  scaffold  I  should 
most  cheerfully  stand,  if  he  had  any  scaffold.  So  much  of  the 
spirit  that  opposes  the  community  I  have  and  have  always  had 
in  me,  simply,  elementally,  deeply.  Over  against  this  natural 
ineffectiveness  in  serving  the  community,  and  over  against  this 
rebellion,  there  has  always  stood  the  interest  which  has  taught  me 
what  I  nowadays  try  to  express  by  teaching  that  we  are  saved 
through  the  community. 

The  resulting  doctrine  of  life  and  of  the  nature  of  truth  and  of 
reality  which  I  have  tried  to  work  out,  to  connect  with  logical 
and  metaphysical  issues,  and  to  teach  to  my  classes,  now  seems 
to  me  not  so  much  romanticism,  as  a  fondness  for  defining,  for 
articulating,  and  for  expounding  the  perfectly  real,  concrete,  and 
literal  life  of  what  we  idealists  call  the  'spirit,'  in  a  sense  which 
is  indeed  Pauline,  but  not  merely  mystical,  super-individual; 
not  merely  romantic,  difficult  to  understand,  but  perfectly  capable 
of  exact  and  logical  statement. 

The  best  concrete  instance  of  the  life  of  a  community  with 
which  I  have  had  the  privilege  to  become  well  acquainted,  has 
been  furnished  to  me  by  my  own  Seminary,  one  of  whose  meetings 
you  have  so  kindly  and  graciously  permitted  me  to  attend  as 
leader,  on  this  to  me  so  precious  occasion. 

.  .  .  But  why  should  you  give  so  kind  an  attention  to  me  at  a 
moment  when  the  deepest,  the  most  vital,  and  the  most  prac- 
tical interests  of  the  whole  community  of  mankind  are  indeed 
imperilled,  when  the  spirit  of  mankind  is  overwhelmed  with  a 
cruel  and  undeserved  sorrow,  when  the  enemies  of  mankind  often 
seem  as  if  they  were  about  to  triumph? 

Let  me  simply  say  in  closing,  how  deeply  the  crisis  of  this  mo- 
ment impresses  me,  and  how  keenly  I  feel  the  bitterness  of  being 
unable  to  do  anything  for  the  Great  Community  except  to  thank 
you  for  your  great  kindness,  and  to  hope  that  we  and  the  Com- 
munity shall  see  better  times  together.  Certainly  unless  the 
enemies  of  mankind  are  duly  rebuked  by  the  results  of  this  war, 
I,  for  one,  do  not  wish  to  survive  the  crisis.  Let  me  then  venture, 
as  I  close,  to  quote  to  you  certain  words  of  the  poet  Swinburne. 
You  will  find  them  in  his  Songs  before  Sunrise.     Let  the  poet 


512  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

and  prophet  speak.     He  voices  the  spirit  of  that  for  which,  in 
my  poor  way,  I  have  always  in  my  weakness  been  working. 

A  WATCH   IN  THE   NIGHT. 
By  a.  C.  Swinburne. 

Watchman,  what  of  the  night? — 

Storm  and  thunder  and  rain, 

Lights  that  waver  and  wane. 
Leaving  the  watchfires  unlit. 
Only  the  balefires  are  bright, 

And  the  flash  of  the  lamps  now  and  then 
From  a  palace  where  spoilers  sit, 

Trampling  the  children  of  men. 

Prophet,  what  of  the  night? — 

I  stand  by  the  verge  of  the  sea, 

Banished,  uncomforted,  free. 
Hearing  the  noise  of  the  waves 
And  sudden  flashes  that  smite 

Some  man's  tyrannous  head. 
Thundering,  heard  among  graves 

That  hide  the  hosts  of  his  dead. 

Mourners,  what  of  the  night? — 

All  night  through  without  sleep 

We  weep,  and  we  weep,  and  we  weep. 
Who  shall  give  us  our  sons? 
Beaks  of  raven  and  kite. 

Mouths  of  wolf  and  of  hound. 
Give  us  them  back  whom  the  guns 

Shot  for  you  dead  on  the  ground. 

Dead  men,  what  of  the  night? — 

Cannon  and  scaffold  and  sword. 

Horror  of  gibbet  and  cord. 
Mowed  us  as  sheaves  for  the  grave. 
Mowed  us  down  for  the  right. 

We  do  not  grudge  or  repent. 
Freely  to  freedom  we  gave 

Pledges,  till  life  should  be  spent. 

Statesman,  what  of  the  night? — 

The  night  will  last  me  my  time. 

The  gold  on  a  crown  or  a  crime 
Looks  well  enough  yet  by  the  lamps. 


No.  3.]  WORDS  OF  PROFESSOR  ROYCE.  513 

Have  we  not  fingers  to  write, 

Lips  to  swear  at  a  need? 
Then,  when  danger  decamps. 

Bury  the  word  with  the  deed. 

Exile,  what  of  the  night? — 

The  tides  and  the  hours  run  out, 

The  seasons  of  death  and  of  doubt, 
The  night-watches  bitter  and  sore. 
In  the  quicksands  leftward  and  right 

My  feet  sink  down  under  me; 
But  I  know  the  scents  of  the  shore 

And  the  broad  blown  breaths  of  the  sea. 

Captives,  what  of  the  night? — 

It  rains  outside  overhead 

Always,  a  rain  that  is  red. 
And  our  faces  are  soiled  with  the  rain. 
Here  in  the  season's  despite 

Day-time  and  night-time  are  one. 
Till  the  curse  of  the  kings  and  the  chain 

Break,  and  their  toils  be  undone. 

Princes,  what  of  the  night? — 

Night  with  pestilent  breath 

Feeds  us,  children  of  death. 
Clothes  us  close  with  her  gloom. 
Rapine  and  famine  and  fright 

Crouch  at  our  feet  and  are  fed. 
Earth  where  we  pass  is  a  tomb. 

Life  where  we  triumph  is  dead. 

Martyrs,  what  of  the  night? — 

Nay,  is  it  night  with  you  yet? 

We,  for  our  part,  we  forget 
What  night  was,  if  it  were. 
The  loud  red  mouths  of  the  fight 

Are  silent  and  shut  where  we  are. 
In  our  eyes  the  tempestuous  air 

Shines  as  the  face  of  a  star. 

Europe,  what  of  the  night? — 

Ask  of  heaven,  and  the  sea. 

And  my  babes  on  the  bosom  of  me, 
Nations  of  mine,  but  ungrown. 


514  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

There  is  one  who  shall  surely  requite 

All  that  endure  or  that  err: 
She  can  answer  alone: 

Ask  not  of  me,  but  of  her. 

Liberty,  what  of  the  night? — • 

I  feel  not  the  red  rains  fall. 

Hear  not  the  tempest  at  all, 
Nor  thunder  in  heaven  any  more. 
All  the  distance  is  white 

With  the  soundless  feet  of  the  sun. 
Night,  with  the  woes  that  it  wore. 

Night  is  over  and  done. 

May  the  light  soon  dawn.     May  the  word  of  the  poet  and 
prophet  soon  come  true.     This  is  my  closing  greeting  to  you. 


A  BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  THE  WRITINGS  OF  JOSIAH 
ROYCE. 

By  benjamin  RAND. 
WORKS. 

Primer  of  Logical  Analysis  for  the  Use  of  Composition  Students.  San 
Francisco,  1881,  pp.  ^^.     Cf.  Mini,  VII,  1882,  pp.  311-312. 

The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy.  Boston,  Houghton,  Mifflin  Co.,  1885; 
7th  ed.,  1887,  pp.  xix,  484.  Cf.  (S.  Alexander)  Mind,  X,  1885,  pp. 
509-605;  (Fr.  Paulhan)  Reo.  philos.,  XX,  1885,  pp.  283-296;  Philos. 
Monatsch.,  XXII,  1886,  pp.  540-560. 

California  from  the  Conquest  in  1846  to  the  Second  Vigilance  Committee  in 
San  Francisco  (1856);  A  Study  of  American  Character.  (American 
Commonwealth  Series.)     Boston,  Houghton,  Mifflin  Co.,  1886,  pp.  xv, 

513- 

The  Feud  of  Oakfield  Creek:  A  Novel  of  California  Life.  Boston,  Hough- 
ton, Mifflin  Co.,  1887,  pp.  iii,  483. 

The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy.  Boston,  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  1892; 
ib.,  1897,  pp.  XV,  519.  Cf.  (J.  E.  Creighton)  Philos.  Rev.,  I,  1892, 
pp.  322-325;  Mind,  XVII,  1892,  pp.  427-428;  The  Monist,  III,  1893, 
pp.  306-311;  (G.  Rodier)  Rev.  philos.,  XXXIV,  1892,  pp.  81-92;  (F. 
Jodl)  Zeitsch.  f.  Phil.  u.  ph.  Krit.,  CIV,  1894,  pp.  117-119;  (C.  S. 
Schaarschmidt)  Philos- Monats.,  XXVI,  1886,  pp.  540-544. 

The  Conception  of  God.  Together  with  comments  thereon  by  S.  E.  Mezes, 
J.  Le  Conte,  and  G.  H.  Howison.  Berkeley  (Cal.),  Philosophical 
Union,  1895,  pp.  84;  New  York  and  London,  Macmillan,  1897.  Pp. 
xxviii,  354. 

The  second  edition  is  enlarged  by  "The  Absolute  and  the  Individual: 
a  supplementary  discussion  with  replies  to  criticisms"  by  Professor 
Royce,  pp.  135-354- 

Studies  of  Good  and  Evil:  A  Series  of  Essays  upon  Problems  of  Life  and 
Philosophy.  New  York,  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1898,  pp.  xvii,  384.  Cf. 
(J.  E.  Creighton)  Philos.  Rev.,  VIII,  1899,  pp.  66-69;  (J-  W.  Chad- 
wick)  iVo^iow,  LXVII,  1898,  263-264;  (C.  K.  Sherman)  Chicago  Dial, 
XXVI,  1898,  121,  264;  1899,  123  (G.  F.  Stout)  Mind,  XXIV,  1899, 
pp.  118-119. 

The  World  and  the  Individual  (Gifford  Lectures).  2  vols.  New  York  and 
London,  Macmillan,  1900-1902;  ih.,  1904,  pp.  xvii,  588,  xx,  480. 
Cf.  (J.  E.  McTaggart)  Mind,  XXV,  1900,  pp.  258-266;  ih.,  XXVII, 
1902,  pp.  557-563;  (J-  Dewey)  Philos.  Rev.,  IX,  1900,  pp.  311-324; 
ib.,  XI,  1902,  pp.  392-407;  (Henry  Jones)  Hibbert  Journal,  i,  1902- 
19031  PP-  132-144;  (C.  M.  Bakewell)  Inter.  Jour,  of  Ethics,  XII, 
1901-02,  pp.  389-398;  (C.  S.  Peirce)  Nation,  LXX,  1900,  p.  267; 
515 


5l6  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

LXXV,  1902,  pp.  94-96;  (S.  S.  Colvin)  Amer.  Jour,  of  Psych.,  XI, 
1900,  p.  596;  (R.  M.  Wenley)  Science,  XV,  1902,  347-8;  Intern.  Qtmrt., 
II,  1900,  pp.  555-583;  (W.  Caldwell)  Chicago  Dial,  xxxii,  pp.  148-151; 
Outlook,  LXVI,  pp.  466-467;  ib.,  LXXI,  pp.  511-512;  R.  C.  Cabot, 
Harv.  Grad.  Afag.,  VIII,  1900,  pp.  317-321;  (J.  F.  Hite)  New.  Church 
Rev.  X,  97;  (J.  Segond)  Rev.  Phil.,  LI,  1901,  pp.  409-411;  (A  Penjon), 
ib.,  LV,  1903,  pp.  189-190. 

The  Conception  of  Immortality.  Boston  and  New  York,  Houghton  Mifflin 
Co.,  1900.  Ib.,  London,  Constable,  1904,  pp.  98.  Cf.  Nation,  LXX, 
1900,  p.  460;  Outlook,  LXVI,  pp.  227-228. 

Present  Position  of  the  Problem  of  Natural  Religion.  (Dudleian  Lecture  at 
Harvard  University  for  1901-02.)  Typewritten  mss.,  Harvard  Uni- 
versity Library,  n.  p.,  n.  d.,  8°. 

Outlines  of  Psychology.  New  York  and  London,  Macmillan,  1903;  ib.,  1906; 
ib.,  1908,  pp.  xxvii,  392.  Cf.  (J.  F.  Muirhead)  Mind,  XXVIII,  1903, 
pp.  546-547;  Nation,  LXXIX,  1904,  pp.  264-265;  Independent,  LV, 
1903,  pp.  2179-80. 

Herbert  Spencer,  an  Estimate  and  a  Review,  together  with  a  chapter  of 
personal  reminiscences  by  James  Collier.  New  York,  Fox  DufSield  & 
Co.,  1904,  pp.  234.  Cf.  (E.  H.  Griffin)  Psychol.  Bull.,  II,  1905,  pp. 
205-207. 

Wie  unterscheiden  sich  gesunde  und  krankhafte  Geistesziistande  beim  Kinde. 
(Pddagogische  Magazin,  Heft  XLIV.)  2  Aufl.,  Langensalza,  H.  Beyer 
und  Sohn,  1904. 

The  Relation  of  the  Principles  of  Logic  to  the  Foundations  of  Geometry  (in 
Transactions  of  the  American  Mathematical  Society,  VI,  no.  3,  July, 
1905.  PP-  353-415).  Lancaster,  Pa.,  1905,  pp.  63.  Cf.  (T.  de  Laguna) 
Jour,  of  Phil.,  Psy.  and  Set.  Meth.,  Ill,  1906,  pp.  357-361. 

The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty.  New  York,  Macmillan,  1908,  pp.  xiii,  409. 
Cf.  (Amy  E.  Tanner)  Amer.  Journ.  of  Psychol.,  XX,  1908,  pp.  409-412; 
(F.  C.  Sharp)  Journ.  of  Phil.,  Psy.  and  Sci.  Meth.,  VI,  1909,  pp.  77-80; 
(J.  W.  Scott)  Mind,  XVIII,  1909,  pp.  270-276;  (W.  R.  Sorley)  Hibbert 
Journ.,  VII,  1908,  pp.  207-210;  (F.  Thilly)  Philos.  Rev.,  XVIII, 
1908,  pp.  541-548;  (D.  S.  Muzzey)  Inter.  Journ.  of  Ethics,  XIX,  1909, 
PP-  509-510;  (G.  Jacoby)  Ztsch.  f.  Phil.  u.  ph.  Krit.,  CXXXIX,  1910, 
pp.  242-243. 

Race  Questions,  Provincialisms,  and  Other  American  Problems.  New  York 
and  London,  Macmillan,  1908,  pp.  xiii,  287.  Cf.  (C.  H.  Richer)  Journ. 
of  Phil.,  Psy.  and  Sci.  Meth.,  VI,  1909,  pp.  162-166;  (J.  Riley)  Amer. 
Journ.  of  Psych.,  XX,  1909,  pp.  588-589. 

La  filosofia  della  fedella.  Trad,  della  inglese  di  Guiseppe  Renzi.  Bari,  Caterza, 
1911. 

William  James  and  other  Essays  on  the  Philosophy  of  Life.  New  York,  The 
Macmillan  Co.,  191 1,  pp.  xi,  301.  Cf.  (J.  E.  Creighton)  Philos.  Rev., 
XXI,  1912,  pp.  478-479;  (R.  F.  a.  Hoernl6)  Mind,  XXXVIII,  1913, 


No.  3-1  BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  JOSIAH  ROYCE.  517 

PP-  563-566;  (H.  M.  Kallen)  Journ.  of  Phil,  Psy.  and  Sci.  Meth.,  IX, 
1912,  pp.  548-558;  (E.  B.  Crooks)  Inter.  Journ.  of  Ethics,  XXII, 
1912,  pp. 354-358. 

The  Sources  of  Religious  Insight.  New  York,  C.  Scribner's  Sons,  1912,  pp. 
xvi,  297.  Cf.  (J.  Loewenberg)  Inter.  Journ.  of  Ethics,  XXIII,  1912, 
pp.  85-88. 

Prinzipien  der  Logik.  In  Encyclopadie  der  philosophischen  Wissenschaften, 
Bd.  I.  Tubingen,  C.  B.  Mohr,  1912,  pp.  107-112.  EngHsh  transl.  by 
B.  Ethel  Meyer.  (In  Encyclopcedia  of  the  Philosophical  Sciences,  Vol. 
I.)  London,  Macmillan,  1913,  pp.  67-135.  Cf.  (A,  Wolf)  Hibbert 
Journ.,  XII,  1914,  pp.  946-950;  (C.  D.  Broad)  Mind,  XXXIX,  pp. 
274-277. 

The  Problem  of  Christianity.  2  vols.  New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1913, 
pp.  xlvi,  425;  vi,  442.  Cf.  (W.  E.  Hocking)  Harvard  Theol.  Rev.,  VII, 
1914,  pp.  107-112;  (L.  P.  Jacks)  Hibbert  Journ.,  XII,  1913,  pp.  215- 
220;  (W.  A.  Brown)  Journ.  of  Phil.,  Psy.  and  Sci.  Meth.,  XI,  1914,  pp. 
608-616;  North  Amer.  Rev.,  CXCVIII,  1913,  pp.  282-286. 

II  mondo  e  I'individuo.  Trad,  della  inglese  di  Giuseppe  Renzi.  2  vols.,  Bari, 
Laterza,  1913-1914. 

War  and  Insurance.     New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1914,  pp.  xlviii,  96, 

CONTRIBUTIONS. 

Appleton's  Cyclopaedia  of  American  Biography.     New  York,  D.  Appleton 

&  Co.,  1887.     (Biographies  of  American  pioneers.) 
Thompson,  Anna  Boynton.     The  Unity  of  Fichte's  Doctrine  of  Knowledge, 

with  an  Introduction  by  Josiah  Royce.     Boston,  Ginn  &  Co.,  1895, 

pp.  ix-xx. 
Dialogues  of  Plato.     Translated  by  Benjamin  Jowett,  with  a  biographical  and 

critical  introduction  by  Josiah  Royce.     New  York,  D.  Appleton  &  Co., 

1898. 
Baldwin,  J.  M,  (ed.)     Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology.     London 

and  New  York,  Macmillan,  1901;  Greek  Terminology,  I,  pp.  422-430; 

Hegel's  Terminology,    I,   pp.  454-465;    Kant's  Terminology,    I,   pp. 

588-598. 
Fiske,  John.     Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy,  with  Introduction  by  Josiah 

Royce.     Boston,  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  1903,  pp.  xxi-cxlvix. 
Congress  of    Arts  and    Sciences,   Universal   Exposition,    St.    Louis,    1904. 

Boston,  Houghton  Mifflin  Co,  1905;  The  Sciences  of  the  Ideal,  I,  pp. 

151-168. 
Rand,  Benjamin.     Modern  Classical  Philosophers.     Boston,  Houghton  Mifflin 

Co.,  1908;  Giordano,  Bruno.     Concerning  the  Cause,  the  Principle  and 

the  One.     Translated  by  Josiah  Royce  and  Katharine  Royce,  pp.  1-23. 
Bericht  iiber  den  III  internationalen  Kongress  fiir  Philosophic  zu  Heidelberg, 

I  bis  5  Sept.,  1908.     Heidelberg,  Carl  Winter,   1903;  The  Problem  of 

Truth  in  the  Light  of  Recent  Discussion.    Pp.  62-93.    Also  in  J.  Royce's 

William  James  and  other  essays.  New  York,  191,  pp.187-254. 


5l8  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Hastings,  James  (ed).    Encyclopaedia  of  Religion   and  Ethics.     New  York, 

Ch.  Scribner's  Sons,  1910-16:   Axiom,  I,  pp.  279-282;    Mind,  VIII, 

pp.  649-657;  Orden,  IX,  (in  press). 
Enriques,  Federigo.     Problems  of  Science;  translated  by  Katharine  Ro>ce, 

with  an  introductory  note  by  Josiah  Royce,  Chicago,  Open  Court  Pub. 

Co.,  19 14,  pp.  ix-xiii. 

ARTICLES. 

The  Intention  of  the  Prometheus  Bound  of  ^schylus:  being  an  introduction 
in  the  department  of  Greek  theology.  Thesis.  California  University 
Bulletin,  1875,  pp.  25. 

The  Life  Harmony.     Overland  Monthly,  XV,  1875,  pp.  157-164. 

The   Nature  of  Voluntary  Progress.     Berkeley  Quarterly,  edited  by  Crane, 

1879. 
The  Interdependence  of  Human  Knowledge.     N.  p.     1878.     (A  thesis  in 

manuscript  for  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy  at  Johns  Hopkins 

University.) 
Schiller's  Ethical  Studies.     Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy,  XII,    1878, 

pp.  373-392. 
Shelley  and  the  Revolution.     The  Calif ornian,  I,  1880,  pp.  543-553- 
The  Decay  of  Earnestness.     The  Californian,  III,  1881,  pp.  18-25. 
Doubting  and  Working.     The  Californian,  III,  1 881,  pp.  229-237. 
Kant's  Relation  to  Modern  Philosophic  Progress.     Journal  of  Speculative 

Philosophy,  XV,  1 881,  pp.  360-381.     (Read  at  Kant's  Centennial  at 

Saratoga,  July  6,  1881.) 
"Mind-stuff"  and  Reality.     Mind,  VI,  1881,  pp.  365-377- 
Mind  and  Reality.     Mind,  VII,  1882,  pp.  30-54- 

The  Freedom  of  Teaching.     Overland  Monthly,  Sept.,  1883,  pp.  235-240. 
Report  of  the  Committee  on  Apparitions  and   Haunted  Houses.     Proc.  of 

Amer.  Soc.for  Psychical  Research,  I,  1887,  No.  3,  pp.  223-229. 
Hallucination  of  Memory  and  'Telepathy.'     Mind,  XIII,  1888,  pp.  244-248. 
Is  there  a  Philosophy  of  Evolution?     Unitarian  Review,  XXXII,  1889,  pp. 

1-29.97-113- 

The  Practical  Value  of  Philosophy.     Ethical  Record,  April,  1889,  pp.  9-22. 
Report  of  the  Committee  on  Phantasms  and  Presentiments.     Proc.  of  Amer. 

Soc.for  Psychical  Research,  I,  1889,  No.  4,  pp.  350-526,  565-567- 
Fremont.    Atlantic  Monthly,  LXVI:  1890,  pp.  548-557- 
Dr.  Abbot's  Way  Out  of  Agnosticism.     International  Journal  of  Ethics,  I, 

1890,  pp.  98-115. 
A  New  Study  of  Psychology  (James).     International  Journal  of  Ethics,  I, 

1890,  pp.  143-160. 
Dewey's  Outlines  of  Ethics;   Spencer's  Justice,  and  other  Reviews  in  the 

International  Journal  of  Ethics,  I-X,  1890-1900. 
Present  Ideals  of  American  University  Life.     Scribner's  Magazine,  X,  1891, 

PP-  376-388. 


No.  3-]  BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  JOSIAH  ROYCE.  519 

Montgomery  and  Fremont.  New  Documents  on  the  Bear  Flag  Affair.  Cen- 
tury Magazine,  XLI,  1891,  pp.  780-783. 

The  Fremont  Legend.     Nation,  LII,  21,  May,  1891,  pp.  423-425. 

The  Outlook  in  Ethics.     International  Journal  of  Ethics,  II,  1891,  pp.  106-111. 

Is  there  a  Science  of  Education?  Educational  Review,  I,  Jan.,  Feb.,  1891, 
pp.  15-25,  121-132. 

Two  Philosophers  of  the  Paradoxical.  Hegel,  Atlantic  Monthly,  LXVll,  Jan., 
1891,  pp.  45-60;  Schopenhaur,  id.,  LXVII,  Feb.,  1891,  pp.  161-173. 

The  Implications  of  Self-consciousness.     New  World,  I,  1892,  pp.  289-310. 

On  Certain  Psychological  Aspects  of  Moral  Training.  International  Journal 
of  Ethics,  III,  1893,  PP-  413-436. 

The  Knowledge  of  Good  and  Evil.  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  IV,  1893, 
pp.  48-80. 

Tolstoi  and  the  Unseen  Moral  Order.     Liber  Scriptorum,  1894,  PP-  488-497. 

The  External  World  and  the  Social  Consciousness.     Philosophical  Review, 

III,  1894,  pp.  513-545.     Cf.  J.  T.  Merz,  A  History  of  European  Thought 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  Edin.,  1914,  Vol.  IV,  p.  437. 

The  Imitative  Functions.     Century  Magazine,  XLVIII,  1894,  pp.  137-144. 
The  Case  of  John  Bunyan.     Psychological  Review,  I,  1894,  PP-  22-33,  I34"~i5i. 

and  230-240.     {Abstract  in  Proc.  of  Amer.  Psychol.  Assoc.     New  York, 

The  Macmillan  Co.,  1894,  PP-  17-18.) 
Self-consciousness,  Social  Consciousness,  and  Nature.     Philosophical  Review, 

IV,  1895,  pp.  465-485,  577-602. 

Some  Observations  on  the  Anomalies  of  Self-consciousness.     Psychological 

Review,  II,  1895,  pp.  433-457,  574-584- 
Preliminary  Report  on  Imitation.     Psychological  Review,  II,  1895,  pp.  217-235. 
Natural  Law,  Ethics  and  Evolution.     International  Journal  of  Ethics,  V, 

1895,  pp.  485-500. 
Review  of  Recent  Literature  on  Mental  Development.     Psychological  Review, 

III,  1896,  pp.  201-21 1. 

Certitudes  and  Illusions.     Science,   1896,  N.  S.,  Ill,  pp.  354-355. 
Originality  and  Consciousness.     Harvard  Monthly,  June,  1897,  pp.  133-142. 
Systematic  Philosophy  in  America  in  the  Years  1893,  1894  and  1895.     Archiv 

fiir  systematische  Philosophic,  III,  1897,  pp.  245-266. 
The  New  Psychology  and  the  Consulting  Psychologist.     Forum,  XXVI,  1898, 

pp.  80-96.     Addr.  &  Proc.  Nat.  Educ.  Assoc.  1898,  pp.  554-570. 
The  Social  Basis  of  Conscience.     (Abstract  and  discussion.)     Addresses  and 

Proceedings  of  National  Education  Association,  1898,  pp.  196-204. 
The  Psychology  of  Invention.     Psychological  Review,  V,  1898,  pp.  1 13-144. 
The  Pacific  Coast:  A  Psychological  Study  of  Influence.     The  International 

Monthly,  II,  1900,  pp.  555-583:  In  "Race  Questions,"  N.  Y.,  1908, 

pp.  169-265. 
Professor  Everett  as  a  Metaphysician.     New  World,  IX,  1900,  pp.  726-741. 
Joseph  Le  Conte.     International  Monthly,  IV,  1901,  pp.  324-334. 
John  Fiske  as  a  Philosopher.     The  Transcript  (Boston),  July  13,  1901. 
John  Fiske  as  a  Thinker.     Harvard  Graduate  Magazine,  Sept.,  1901,  pp.  23-33. 


520  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW.  [Vol.  XXV. 

Recent  Logical  Inquiries  and  Their  Psychological  Bearings.  Psychological 
Review,  IX,  1902,  pp.  105-133. 

The  Concept  of  the  Infinite.     The  Hibhert  Journal,  i,  1902,  pp.  21-45. 

The  Problem  of  Natural  Religion.  International  Quarterly,  VII,  1903,  pp. 
85-107. 

What  Should  be  the  Attitude  of  Teachers  of  Philosophy  Towards  Religion? 
International  Journal  of  Ethics,  XIII,  1903,  pp.  280-285. 

Pope  Leo's  Philosophical  Movement.  Review  of  Catholic  Pedagogy,  Nov.-Dec, 
1903,  pp.  1-17. 

Herbert  Spencr  and  His  Contribution  to  the  Concept  of  Evolution.  Inter- 
national Quarterly,  IX,  1904,  pp.  335-365. 

The  Sciences  of  the  Ideal.     Science,  N.  S.,  XX,  1904,  pp.  449-462. 

The  Eternal  and  the  Practical.  Philosophical  Review,  XIII,  1904,  pp.  1 13-142. 
Cf.  (H.  Bawden)  Psychol.  Bull.,  I,  1904,  pp.  320-324. 

Kant's  Doctrine  of  the  Basis  of  Mathematics.  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psy- 
chology and  Scientific  Methods,  II,  1905,  pp.  197-207. 

Race  Questions  and  Prejudices.  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  XVI,  1906, 
pp.  265-287:  In  "  Race  Questions,"  N.  Y.,  1908,  pp.  3-83. 

The  Present  State  of  the  Question  Regarding  the  First  Principles  of  Theo- 
retical Science.  Proceedings  of  American  Philosophical  Society,  V,  1906, 
pp.  82-102. 

Immortality.     The  Hibbert  Journal,  V,  1907,  pp.  724-744. 

Provincialism  Based  upon  a  Study  of  Early  Conditions  in  California.  Put- 
nam's Magazine,  VII,  1909,  pp.  232-240. 

The  American  College  and  Life.     Science,  N.  S.,  XXIX,  1909,  pp.  401-407. 

What  Is  Vital  in  Christianity?  Harvard  Theological  Review,  II,  1909,  pp. 
408-445. 

The  Reality  of  the  Temporal.  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  XX,  1910, 
pp.  257-270. 

James  as  a  Philosopher.     Science,  N.  S.,  XXXIV,  191 1,  pp.  33-45. 

On  Definitions  and  Debates.  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific 
Methods,  IX,  1912,  pp.  85-100. 

Atonement.     The  Atlantic  Monthly,  CXI,  1913,  pp.  406-419. 

Some  Psychological  Problems  Emphasized  by  Pragmatism.  Popular  Science 
Monthly,  LXXXIII,  1913,  pp.  394-412. 

Essential  Contrast  Between  Christianity  and  Buddhism.  Current  Opinion, 
LV,  1913,  pp.  41-42.     (Portrait.) 

George  Fox  as  a  Mystic.     The  Harvard  Theological  Review,  VI,  1913,  pp.  31-59- 

Psychological  Problems  Emphasized  by  Pragmatism.  Popular  Science 
Monthly,  LXXXIII,  1913,  pp.  394-411. 

Relations  Between  Philosophy  and  Science  in  the  First  Half  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century.     Science,  N.  S.,  XXXVIII,  1913,  pp.  567-584. 

The  Second  Death.     The  Atlantic  Monthly,  CXI,  1913,  pp.  242-254. 

An  Extension  of  the  Algebra  of  Logic.  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology 
and  Scientific  Methods,  X,  1913,  pp.  617-633. 


No.  3.]  BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  JOSIAH  ROYCE.  52 1 

The  Christian  Doctrine  of  Life.     The  Hibbert  Journal,  XIII,  19 13,  pp.  473-496. 

The  Mechanical,  the  Historical  and  the  Statistical.  Science,  N.  S.,  XXXIX, 
1914,  pp.  551-566. 

Professor  Royce  on  His  Reviewer.     New  Republic,  I,  1914,  p.  23, 

A  Word  for  the  Times.  Harvard  Graduate  Magazine,  XXIII,  Dec,  1914, 
pp.  207-209. 

The  Carnegie  Foundation  for  the  Advancement  of  Teaching  and  the  Case 
of  Middlebury  College.     School  and  Society,  I,  1915,  pp.  145-150. 

An  American  Thinker  on  the  War.     The  Hibbert  Journal,  XIV,  1915,  pp.  37-42. 

The  Hope  of  the  Great  Community.     The  Yale  Review,  V,  Jan.,  1916,  269-291. 

The  Duties  of  Americans  in  the  Present  War.  An  address  delivered  at 
Tremont  Temple  (Boston),  Sunday,  January  30,  1916.  Pp.  8.  (Ad- 
dress for  copies  D.  Austin,  50  Bromfield  St.,  Boston,  Mass.) 

CRITICISM. 

Aliotta,   Professor.     The   Idealistic   Reaction  Against  Science.     Trans,   by 

Agnes  McCaskell.     London,  Macmillan,  19 14,  pp.  240-269. 
Baldwin,  J.  M.     Social  and  Ethical  Interpretation  in  Mental  Development. 

New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1897,  pp.  9f,  23 if.    Appendices  C,  E,  H. 
Becelaere,  L.  van.     La  philosophie  en  Amerique.     New  York,  Eclectic  Publ. 

Co.  [1914],  pp.  111-113. 
Boodin,  J.  E.     Truth  and  Reality.     New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  191 1, 

pp. 109-111,  160. 
Bradley,  F.  H.     Essays  on  Truth  and  Reality.     O.xford,  1914,  pp.  277-280. 
Bosanquet,    B.     The    Principle    of    Individuality    and    Value.     Macmillan, 

London,  1912,  pp.  69,  82,  387,  394. 
Buckham,  John  W.     The  Contribution  of  Prof.  Royce  to  Christian  Thought. 

Harvard  Theological  Review,  VIII,  1915,  pp.  219-237. 
Caldecott,  Alfred.     The  Philosophy  of  Religion  in  England  and  America 

New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1901,  pp.  163-165. 
Calkins,  Mary  W.     Psychology.     New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  pp.   34iff, 

445- 
The   Persistent  Problems  of   Philosophy.      New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co., 

1907,  p.  4i8f. 
Carr,  E.  S.     Royce's  Philosophy  of  Religion.     Bibliotheca  Sacra,  LXXI,  1914, 

pp.  283-295. 
DriscoU,  J.  S.     Prof.  Royce  on  the  Problem  of  Christianity.     North  American 

Review,  CXCVIII,  1913,  pp.  640-652. 
Fullerton,  G.  S.     A  System  of  Metaphysics.     New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co., 

1901,  pp.  585-597- 
The  World  We  Live  In.     New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1912,  pp.  198- 

228,  283-286. 
Galloway,  George.     Studies  in  the  Philosophy  of  Religion.     Edinburgh,  1904, 

pp.  228f. 
The  Principles  of  Religious  Development.     London,  The  Macmillan  Co., 

1909,  pp.  86,  338f. 


522  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  REVIEW. 

Henderson,  Lawrence  J.  The  Fitness  of  the  Environment.  New  York, 
The  Macmillan  Co.,  1913.     (Acknowledgment  in  preface.) 

Hocking,  W.  E,  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience.  New  Haven, 
Yale  University  Press,  1912,  pp.  isSflf;  351;  498!!. 

Inge,  W.  R.  Institutionalism  and  Mysticism.  Hibberi  Journal,  XH,  1914, 
pp.  766-779. 

James,  William.     Pragmatism,  New  York,  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  1907. 
See  Index. 
A  Pluralistic  Universe,  New  York,  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  1909.     See 
Index. 

Kawaguchi,  U.  Doctrine  of  Evolution  and  the  Conception  of  God:  Philos- 
ophies of  Royce  and  Eucken.  American  Journal  of  Theology,  XIX, 
1915.  pp.  556-576. 

Macintosh,  Douglas  Clyde.  The  Problem  of  Knowledge.  New  York,  The 
Macmillan  Co.,  1915,  p.  I4if. 

Mezes,  S.  E.  Ethics,  Descriptive  and  Explanatory.  New  York,  The  Mac- 
millan Co.,  1901,  pp.  62,  113,  143. 

Moore,  A.  W.  Some  Logical  Aspects  of  Purpose,  in.  J.  Dewey,  ed.  "Studies 
in  Logical  Theory."  Chicago,  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1903,  pp. 
341-382. 

Ormond,  Alexander  Thomas.  Foundations  of  Knowledge.  London,  The 
Macmillan  Co.,  1900. 

Perry,  Ralph  Barton.     Professor  Royce's  Refutation  of  Realism  and  Plural- 
ism.    The  Monist,  XII,  1902,  pp.  446-458. 
Present  Philosophical  Tendencies.     New  York,  Longmans,  1912,  pp.  161, 
175-184,  191. 

Riley,  Woodbridge.  American  Thought.  New  York,  H.  Holt  &  Co.,  1915, 
pp.  253-265. 

Rob'et,  H.  Un  metaphysicien  americain  contemporain,  J.  Royce.  Revue 
philosophique,  LXIII,  1907,  pp.  1 13-139. 

Russell,  J.  E.  First  Course  in  Philosophy.  New  York,  H.  Holt  &  Co., 
1913.  PP-  55-60,  292-295. 

Taylor,  A.  E.  Elements  of  Metaphysics.  London,  Methuen  &  Co.,  1903, 
p.  i48flF. 

Thilly,  Frank.    A  History  of  Philosophy.     New  York,  H.  Holt  &  Co.,  1914 

P-  559ff- 
Urban,  W.  M.     Valuation,  Its  Nature  and  Laws.     London,  Swan  Sonnen- 

schein  &  Co.,  1909,  pp.  62,  126,  234. 
Ward,  James.     The  Realm  of  Ends.     Cambridge,  University  Press,   191 1, 

pp.  I29n.,  297,  312-315,  411. 


A  New  Series  of  Books  on  Popular  Philosophy 

By  George  Trumbull  Ladd,  LL.D.,  Emeritus  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy 
and  Metaphysics,  Yale  University. 

WHAT  CAN  I  KNOW? 

An  Inquiry  into  Truth,  its  Nature,  The  Means  of  its  Attainment  and  its  Rela- 
tions to  the  Practical  Life.  Crown  8vo.     ;?i.50  net. 

WHAT  OUGHT  I  TO  DO? 

An  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  and  Kinds  of  Virtue  and  into  the  Sanctions,  Aims, 
and  Values  of  the  Moral  Life.  Crown  8vo.     $1.50  net. 

WHAT  SHOULD  I  BELIEVE? 

An  Inquiry  into  the  Nature,  Grounds  and  Value  of  the  Faiths  of  Science, 
Society,  Morals  and  Religion.  Crown  8vo.     $1.50  net. 

WHAT  MAY  I  HOPE? 

An  Inquiry  into  the  Sources  and  Reasonableness  of  the  Hopes  of  Humanity, 
Especially  the  Social  and  Religious.  Crown  Svo.     ^1.50  net. 

The  Yale  professor's  series  of  books  on  knowledge,  ethics  and  belief,  now  com- 
pleted by  an  inquiry  into  the  sources  and  reasonableness  of  "  human  hopes,"  is  a 
work  of  which  Americans  may  be  justly  proud.  Nothing  could  be  more  blessedly 
remote  from  the  dry  and  unprofitable  profundity  of  modern  Teuton  philosophy  than 
these  common  sense  formulations  of  the  questions  that  occur  and  recur  to  every  man's 
mind,  these  travelling  directions  for  the  pilgrim  between  two  darknesses.  Nor,  on 
the  other  hand,  are  they  tinct  with  Bergsonian  metaphysical  romanticism  or  Maeter- 
linckish  "mysticism."  In  a  word.  Prof.  Ladd  handles  sensible  questions  in  a  sen- 
sible way,  and  sensible  people  will  thank  him  for  giving  them  a  loaf  when  they  ask 
for  bread,  instead  of  the  Belgian  block  with  which  so  many  philosophers  fool  them- 
selves and  try  to  fool  plain  John  Smith.  .  .  Those  who  are  not  endowed  with 
spontaneous  correctness  of  conduct  and  belief  must,  if  they  are  determined  to  make 
the  most  out  of  life,  begin  the  remodelling  of  their  constitutions  in  the  amendment 
of  their  faiths  rather  than  in  immediate  reconstruction  of  their  conduct.  Prof.  Ladd 
makes  these  things  clear  without  the  slightest  suggestion  of  censorship  or  the  Sunday 
School." — JSie^v  York  Sun. 

THE  CROWD  IN  PEACE  AND  WAR 

By  Sir  Martin  Conway,  late  Roscoe  Professor  of  Art,  Liverpool  ;  Slade  Pro- 
fessor of  Art,  Cambridge  ;  President  of  the  Alpine  Club. 

Crown  Svo.     Pp.  viii-f332.     ;?i.75  net. 

This  is  an  attempt  to  deal  in  popular  language  with  the  relations  of  the  individ- 
ual to  the  crowd,  and  of  crowds  to  one  another.  The  writer  discusses  the  broad 
questions  of  morality,  religion,  government,  socialism,  war,  education,  and  so  forth, 
from  a  novel  point  of  view,  and  illustrates  his  remarks  by  numerous  tales  and  cita- 
tions from  authors  ancient  and  modern. 

'<Thebookis  one  of  the  most  valuable  issued  in  many  months.  The  detail, 
always  vital  and  never  tedious,  into  which  the  author  carries  his  analyses,  the 
naturalness  and  vividness  of  his  illustrations,  and  the  epigrammatic  style  in  which  he 
writes,  combine  to  hold  the  reader's  interest  tense  through  all  the  332  pages,  giving 
to  a  condensed  and  serious  psychological  study  much  of  the  fascination  of  a  romance." 
—  The  Nation,  N.   V. 


Longmans,  Qreen,  &  Co.,  Publishers 


BARRETT— Motive-Force  and  Motivation-Tracks.  A  Research 
in  Will  Psychology.  By  E.  Boyd  Barrett,  S.J.,  Doctor  of 
Philosophy,  Superior  Institute,  Louvain,  Honours  Graduate, 
National  University,  Ireland.     8vo.  $2.50  net. 

BENN— The  History  of  English  Rationalism  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century.  By  Alfred  W.  Benn,  Author  of  "  The  Philosophy 
of  Greece,"  etc.     2  vols.,  8vo.  g 7. 00  net. 

BOUTROUX — William  James.  By  £mile  Boutroux,  Membre  de 
rinstitut.  Translated,  with  the  Author's  sanction  and  coopera- 
tion, from  the  Second  Edition  by  Archibald  and  Barbara 
Henderson.     i2mo.  $1.00  net;  by  mail,  $i. 08. 

BRITAN — The  Philosophy  of  Music.  A  Comparative  Investigation 
into  the  Principles  of  Musical  Esthetics.  By  Halbert  Hains 
Britan,  Ph.  D. ,  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Bates  College.  Crown 
8vo.  $1-35  iiet ;  by  mail,  $1.48. 

BROUGH — The  Study  of  Mental  Science.  Five  Lectures  on  the 
"Uses  and  Characteristics  of  Logic  and  Psychology."  By  J. 
Brough,  Professor  of  Logic  and  Philosophy  at  the  University 
College  of  Wales.     Crown  8vo.  $1.00  net. 

CROZIER — Civilization  and  Progress.  By  John  Beattie  Crozier, 
LL.D.     8vo.   $4-50. 

History  of  Intellectual  Development  on  the  Lines  of  Modern 
Evolution.  Vol.  I.  Greek  and  Hindoo  Thought ;  Graeco- 
Roman  Paganism  ;  Judaism  ;  and  Christianity  down  to  the  Clos- 
ing of  the  Schools  of  Athens  by  Justinian.  8vo.  $4-So- 
Vol.  II.  [In preparation.'] 
Vol.  III.  Political;  Educational ;  Social ;  including  an  attempted 
Reconstruction  of  the  Politics  of  England,  France  and  America 
for  the  Twentieth  Century.  8vo.  $3-5o- 
Sociology  Applied  to  Practical  Politics.     8vo.            $3- 00  net. 

DEWING. — Life  as  Reality:  a  Philosophical  Essay.  By  Arthur 
Stone  Dewing,  of  Harvard  University.     Crown  8vo. 

$1.25  net;  by  mail,  $1.35. 

DUBRAY  —  Introductory  Philosophy  :  a  Text-Book  for  Colleges 
and  High  Schools.  By  Charles  A.  Dubray,  S.M.,  Ph.D., 
Professor  of  Philosophy  at  the  Marist  College,  Washington,  D.C. 
Small  8vo.     $2.60*. 

FAWCETT.  The  Individual  and  Reality.  By  Edward  Douglas 
Fawcett.     Medium  8vo.  $4-2  5  net 

"I  hail  your  book  as  agreat  and  powerful  agencyin  the  spreading  of  the  truth." 

William  James. 

FIXE — Works  by  Warner  Fite,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Philosophy 
in  Indiana  University. 

An  Introductory  Study  of  Ethics.     Crown  Svo.     $1.60. 
Individualism  :    Four  Lectures  on  the  Significance    of  Con- 
sciousness for  Social  Relations.     Crown  8vo. 

$1.80  net;  by  mail,  $1.92. 

LONGMANS,  GREEN,  &  CO.,  Publishers 


GREEN— The  Works  of  Thomas  Hill  Green,  late  Whyte's  Professor 
of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Oxford.  Edited  by 
R.  L.  Nettleship. 

Vols.  I  and  II.  Philosophical  Works.  8vo.  Each,  $2.50  net 
Vol.  III.     Miscellaneous  and  Memoir.     8vo.  ;S53-oo  net 

*^*In  sets,  3  vols.     ;?7.50  net 

HARRIS— The  Significance  of  Existence.  By  I  Harris,  M.D. 
Crown  8vo.  ^2.00  net. 

HUME— The  Philosophical  Works  of  David  Hume.  Edited  by 
T.  H.  Green,  M.A.,  and  the  Rev.  T.  H.  Grose,  M.A.  4 
vols.     8vo.     ^10.00.  Or  separately: 

Essays:  Moral,  Political  and  Literary.     2  vols.  ^5- 00 

A  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  etc.     2  vols.  $5- 00 

JAMES— Works  by  William  James,  M.D.,  Ph.  et  Litt.D.,  late  Pro- 
fessor of  Psychology  in  Harvard  University. 

The  Will  to  Believe,  and  other  Essays  in  Popular  Philosophy.  $2.00. 

The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience^  Being  the  Gifford  Lectures,  de- 
livered at  Edinburgh  in  1901-1902.  8vo.  $3.20  net;  by  mail,  1^3.40. 
Pragmatism.  A  New  Name  for  Some  Old  Ways  of  Thinking.    8vo. 

;5!i.25  net;  by  mail,  $1.^^. 
The  Meaning  of  Truth :  A  Sequel  to  '  Pragmatism. '     8vo. 

;5!i.25  net ;  by  mail,  gi.38. 
A  Pluralistic  Universe  :  Lectures  on  the  Hibbert  Foundation  on  the  Present 
Situation  of  Philosophy.     8vo.  ^1.50  net ;  by  mail,  ;5Si.64. 

Some  Problems  of  Philosophy.  A  Beginning  of  an  Introduction  to  Philos- 
ophy. 8vo.  ^1.25  net;  by  mail,  ^1.38. 
Memories  and  Studies.  8vo.  $i-7S  net ;  by  mail,  ^1.89. 
Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism.                     8vo.     f  1.25  net ;  by  mail,  ;?i.38 

JOHNSON— God  in  Evolution.     A  Pragmatic  Study  of  Theology 

By  Francis  Howe  Johnson,  Author  of  ' '  What  is  Reality  ?' ', 
Crown  8vo.  $1.60  net;  by  mail,  ^1.75 

JOURDAIN.  On  the  Theory  of  the  Infinite  in  Modern  Thought. 
By  E.  F.  JoURDAiN,  Doctor  of  the  University  of  Paris,  Vice- 
Principal,  St.  Hugh's  Hall,  Oxford.  Crown  8vo.     ^0.75  net. 

JOYCE.     Principles  of  Logic.     By  George  Hayward  Joyce,  S.  J., 

M.A.,  Professor  of  Logic,  St.  Mary's  Hall,  Stonyhurst.   8vo. 

$2.50 
KELLY.     Works  by  Edmond  Kelly,  M.A.,  F.G.S.,    late  Lecturer 

on  Municipal  Government  at  Columbia  University.     Author  of 

"Evolution  and  Effort." 

Government  or  Human  Evolution.     In  two  parts.     Crown  Svo. 

I.  Justice.  Si.  50 

II.  Individualism  and  Collectivism.  ^2.50 
Twentieth  Century  Socialism ;  What  it  is  not ;  what  it  is; 
how  it  may  come.         Crown  Svo.     ^1.75  net;  by  mail,  $1.88. 

LONGMANS,  GREEN,  &  CO.,  Publishers 


''A  Book  of  Commaading  Importance" 

Professor  John  Dewey,  of  Columbia  University,  New  York,  in 
the  July  Philosophical  Review,  writes  as  follows  concerning  Mr. 
Bertrand  Russell's  recent  book  Our  Knowledge  of  the  External 
World  as  a  Field  for  Scientific  Method  in  Philosophy. 

"  There  are  many  ways  of  stating  the  problem  of  the  exist- 
ence of  an  external  world.  I  shall  make  that  of  Mr.  Bertrand 
Russell  the  basis  of  my  examinations,  as  it  is  set  forth  in  his 
recent  book  Oar  Knowledge  of  the  External  World  as  a  Field  for 
Scientific  Method  in  Philosophy.  I  do  this  both  because  his 
statement  is  one  recently  made  in  a  book  of  commanding  import- 
ance, and  because  it  seems  to  me  to  be  a  more  careful  statement 
than  most  of  those  in  vogue." 

Professor  Bernard  Bosanquet  speaks  of  the  same  book,  Our 
Knowledge  of  the  External  World  as  a  Field  for  Scientific  Method 
in  Philosophy,  as  follows : 

"This  book  consists  of  lectures  delivered  as  Lowell  Lectures 
in  Boston,  in  March  and  April,  1914.  It  is  so  attractive  in  itself, 
and  its  author  is  so  well-known,  that  I  think  by  this  time  it  may 
be  'taken  as  read,'  and  I  may  offer  some  discussion  without  a 
preliminary  abstract." 

It  is  admitted  by  scholars,  both  in  England  and  America, 
that  Bertrand  Russell's  book,  Our  Knowledge  of  the  External 
World  as  a  Field  for  Scientific  Method  in  Philosophy,  is  the  book 
of  the  year. 

Note.  This  book  appeared  simultaneously  in  Great  Britain  and 
Am.erica,  brought  out  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company 
of  Chicago  and  London.  Unfortunately,  by  some  mistake,  the 
book  was  published  under  two  titles.  In  England  it  is  given  its 
full  title,  while  the  American  edition  has  the  shorter  title,  Scien- 
tific Method  in  Philosophy.  The  two  editions  are  identical,  and 
it  is  a  little  unfortunate  that  this  mistake  was  made.  The  second 
American  edition  will  be  brought  out  under  the  same  title  as 
the  English  edition. 


Ail  Book  Stores  or 
Sent  on  Receipt  of  Price,  $2.00 

Open  Court  Publishing  Company 

CHICAQO 


GENERAL  LIBRARY 
UNrvT^RSI-^Y  or  r"  TFORN'A-  T    '  F'^T 


-^^oandTpt. 


(P2001B10)476— A-32 


o 


39^ 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

i-i,.^.  .  . ..  ■ 


.n>/- 


